MSW DAY Advanced Year Curriculum Concentrations
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ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY PRACTICE
CHILDREN, YOUTH AND FAMILIES
MULTIGENERATIONAL PRACTICE
COMMUNITY-CENTERED INTEGRATIVE PRACTICE (CCIP)
HEALTH PRACTICE
MENTAL HEALTH PRACTICE
To assist with developing your learning plan, concentrations are described below along with Policy/Services
and Methods course offerings and concentration requirements. All courses are available as electives to
students outside the concentration on a space-available and schedule-permitting basis.
ADMINISTRATION AND POLICY PRACTICE
Faculty Contact Info: JENNIE ROMICH (romich@uw.edu) JEAN KRUZICH (kruzichj@uw.edu)
The Administration and Policy Practice concentration prepares social workers to assume leadership roles in
today’s complex human services organizations and policy arenas. Our graduates will be life-long learners with
skills in defining and measuring social problems; devising and analyzing policy and program alternatives;
influencing policy decisions; and leading diverse human services institutions in program planning, design,
implementation, evaluation, and change. Students may also choose to develop competency in resource
development, fiscal management, legislative advocacy, or participatory community-based evaluation.
Students in this concentration are required to take 3 Methods courses; however they are not required to take
a Policy/Services course. Students wanting to take a Policy/Services course as an elective are free to do so (on
a space-available and schedule-permitting basis).
Required Methods courses:
550 - Strategic Program Management and Change Leadership in Human Services: Examines tools and
techniques required for leadership, program planning, implementation, and program change. Topics include
strategic planning, logic modeling, agency-bound relations, work-group facilitation, and diversity-promoting
management.
560 - Policy Processes, Institutions, and Influences: Focuses on the process and institutions through which
social policies are developed, adopted, and implemented, with special attention to the implications of these
processes for social justice. Develops practice skills in analyzing and influencing the policy process, including
social problem definition, policy design, policy adaptation, and policy implementation.
AND 1 of the following Methods courses:
561 - Concepts and Methods of Policy Analysis: Engages students in the concepts and applied practice of policy
analysis and evaluation. Prepares students to address two generic policy questions: Given an identified
problem, what policy or program should be selected? Given a particular policy or program, how do we
evaluate effectiveness? Particular attention paid to social justice implications.
551 – Human Resource Management in the Human Services: Theories and techniques for 1) designing human
services workplaces that support employees' performance and well-being, and 2) managing diverse, satisfied,
and high-performing human service staffs. Topics include job quality analyses; job descriptions; employee
interviewing, supervision and performance evaluation; models of negotiation and conflict resolution; and
strategies for working with volunteers.
Recommended electives:
552: Financial Management in Human Services
574: Collaborative Community-Based Evaluation
580: Grant Writing and Fund Development
586: Policy Advocacy
Policy/Services course OPTIONAL: any of the following as an elective • 529 - Mental Health Policy/Services •
528 - Health Policy/Services • 527 - Global and Local Inequalities Policy/Services • 521 - Child and Family
Policy/Services • 526 - Multigenerational Policy/Services
Potential Practicum Site Examples
 City of Seattle, Human Services Department or
Office for Civil Rights
 City of Bellevue, Parks and Community Services
 King County Public Health, Environmental
Services Department
 Paul G. Allen Family Foundation
 School's Out Washington
 Social Justice Fund NW
 Solid Ground, Statewide Poverty Action
Network
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United Food and Commercial Workers Union
Local 21
United Way of King County Community Services
Vietnamese Friendship Association
Partners for Our Children
Washington State House of Representatives
Core Concentration Faculty:
Jean Kruzich, Jennie Romich, Amelia Gavin, Marcia Meyers, Peter Pecora, Diana Pearce, Gunnar
Almgren, Aiko Schaefer, Bill Vesneski, Jen Stuber, Emiko Tajima, Melissa Martinson, Jennifer Brower
(Field Education Rep.)
CHILDREN, YOUTH AND FAMILIES
Faculty Contact Info: MAUREEN MARCENKO (mmarcenk@uw.edu)
The Children, Youth, and Families Concentration prepares MSW level practitioners to provide
interventions broadly defined to include direct work with individual children and youth, collaborative
work with parents and families, advocacy efforts, and consultation to systems serving children and
families. Interventions are approached within a developmentally anchored, culturally sensitive,
collaborative, and empowering framework. Issues pertaining to social and economic justice are
addressed through examining the impacts of poverty, contemporary and historical oppression, and
disproportionality on children and families. Graduates assume responsibility in such areas as: School
Social Work; Infant, Child and Adolescent Mental Health; Public Child Welfare; Family Support;
Residential Treatment; Community Based Programs for Juvenile Offenders; Prevention Programs and
Programs for Families of Children with Disabilities. Students in the CYF concentration must take a
Policy/Services course and 2 Methods courses.
Required Policy/Services course:
521 - Child and Family Policy Services: Advanced study of policy and services relevant to practice with
children, adolescents, and families. Applies social justice framework to understanding policy context
and organization of services responses to child and family inequalities, especially for historically
oppressed and marginalized populations. Examines social construction of policies in historical, political,
and comparative context.
Required Methods course:
530 - Advanced Practice with Diverse Children, Youth and Families: Builds on foundation frameworks
and competencies to develop specialized knowledge and skills for working with vulnerable children and
families. An ecological framework informs family- and community-centered assessment and
intervention that is empowering, culturally responsive, and clinically relevant. Foci include resilience,
violence, attachment, loss, substance abuse, and disability.
AND 1 of the following Methods courses:
531 - Advanced Practice with Diverse Children, Youth and Families: Focus on Child Mental Health OR
Community-Based Advanced Practice: Develops specialized knowledge and skills for practice with
children and families. Emphasis on child and family assessments and interventions that are culturally
relevant, collaborative, and strength-promoting.
Or 532 - Advanced Practice with Diverse Children, Youth and Families: Focus on Child Welfare: Develops
advanced knowledge and skills for culturally relevant child welfare practice across a range of settings
including child protection, foster care, and adoption. Topics include family dynamics around child
maltreatment; trauma and its impact on children; separation, loss, and identity development; and selfcare in child welfare practice.
Recommended electives:
572 Social Work Practice with Chemically Dependent Adults: Cognitive-Behavioral Approaches
556 Family Healing
588 School Social Work
598 Family, School, Individual, Community Prevention/Promotion Intervention
582 Interpersonal Violence and Trauma
598 Social Work with Military Service Members, Veterans and their Families
598 Motivational Interviewing for Child Mental Health (1 credit)
598 A 2 Stage Model for Identifying Youth who are At-Risk for Suicide (1 credit)
Potential Practicum Site Examples:
 Renton Area Youth Services (RAYS)
 Highline School District (among others)
 Atlantic Street Center
 Center on Human Development and
Disability
 Washington State Department of Child and
Family Services (CWTAP)
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Early Head Start
King County Superior Court-Youth and
Family
Youth Eastside Services
Foster Care Assessment Program (FCAP
Core Concentration Faculty: Maureen Marcenko, Susan Kemp, Tessa Evans-Campbell, Michelle
Bagshaw (Field Education Rep.), Wendy Lustbader, Zynovia Hetherington, Tracy Harachi, Peter Pecora,
Emiko Tajima
MULTIGENERATIONAL PRACTICE
Faculty Contact Info: NANCY HOOYMAN (hooy@uw.edu)
This concentration is distinctive nationally for its cross-generational perspective on families across the
life course with a focus on older family members. With increased life expectancy, more families
encompass three or four generations, with children, adults in the middle and older adults as vital
members. Given the rapid growth of multigenerational families, all social workers need competencies
to work effectively with all generations within families and communities. Clinical and policy issues such
as loss, mental and physical health, family trauma and healing; family caregiving, including ;
grandparents as primary caregivers of grandchildren; public and private policies and programs to
support families, including LGBT families and families of color; and end of life care are addressed from
a cross-generational and strengths perspective. Students trained in this concentration will receive
significant practice content in mental health issues across the lifespan, working with families facing
multiple crises, and serving family caregivers, thereby gaining gerontological skills which are in high
demand in the social work job market. Students must take a Policy/Services course, an Integrative
Seminar and two Methods courses.
Required Policy/Services course:
526 - Multigenerational Policy and Services: Builds social workers' competencies to analyze, critique,
and advocate for policies and processes that support growing numbers of multigenerational families
with a focus on older adults. Presents a feminist, multicultural, and multigenerational perspective to
analyze how historical and current service structures, policies, and regulations support or undermine
families across the life course.
Required Methods courses:
546 - Multigenerational Advanced Practice: Addressing Family Trauma, Loss, and Recovery:
Multigenerational perspective on clinical interventions for various traumas: childhood sexual abuse,
battering at any age, chemically dependent parents, elders with abusive adult children, and a range of
losses throughout the lifespan. Recovery process explicated in terms of family strengths across the
generations and through state-of-the art techniques for healing trauma, with a focus on older adults.
547 – Multigenerational Integrative Seminar: Designed to foster the integration of classroom learning
and field education. Taken concurrently with advanced practicum, provides support for addressing
challenges in professional settings, development of leadership skills, and preparing for future work in
the field of multigenerational practice.
556 - Multigenerational Advanced Practice: Family Healing: A Cross-Generational Approach: Explores
how to respond to multi-generational dynamics within the entire extended family and how difficulties
and strengths are passed from one generation to another. Examines differences by race, gender,
sexual orientation, social class and ability as well as issues pertaining to the impact of chemical
dependency, mental illness, and disability across generations with a focus on elders.
Recommended elective:
571 Assessment of Mental Disorders
Potential Practicum Site Examples:
 FullLife, Adult Day Health Programs
 City of Seattle Aging and Disability Services
(Case Management Program, PEARLS
Program, Adult Day Services, Memory and
Wellness Program)
 ERA Living, University House/Issaquah,
Resident and Family Support Programs
 Washington Center for Comprehensive
Rehabilitation
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Senior Services, Kinship Care Program,
Senior Centers, and “Aging Your Way”
initiative
Veterans Administration Hospital,
Geropsychiatric Unit
Catholic Community Services, African
American Elders Program
Home and community-based care
Initiatives to support aging in place
Health promotion and wellness program
Core Concentration Faculty: Nancy Hooyman, Karen Fredriksen-Goldsen, Wendy Lustbader, Peter
Pecora, Jordan Lewis, Alice Ryan (Field Education Rep)
COMMUNITY-CENTERED INTEGRATIVE PRACTICE (CCIP)
Faculty Contact Info: GINO AISENBERG (ginoa@uw.edu)
The mission of the CCIP concentration is to prepare students to be partners and leaders in
transformative social work practice. Through teaching, research, scholarship and practice, we seek to
engage students in just social work practice that is inclusive and culturally responsive across micro-,
meso- and macro-levels of practice. We use participatory methods of dialogic engagement,
community centered-ness and global-local integration in practice. CCIP equips students with requisite
knowledge, skills and values to work as change agents in an integrative, collaborative, and
comprehensive manner across local-global contexts to promote just practice embedded in
relationships, service delivery, and societal change. Some salient skills embedded in the CCIP
concentration include: (a) intergroup dialogue and social justice group work, (b) constructive
engagement of difference, conflict and inequality, (c) just policy analysis and advocacy, (d) community
planning, partnership and organizing, (e) theory of change models and grant writing, (f) mental health
assessment and practice skills to promote well-being within diverse and marginalized communities;
and (g) practice skills to address the traumatic effects of violence at individual and community levels.
CCIP students must take a Policy/Services course and 2 Methods courses.
Required Policy/Services course:
527 - Global and Local Inequalities: Policy/Services: Discussion of the health of the planet, economic
and cultural globalization, the enduring legacies of imperialism and colonialism in this global era, and
their local impacts. Foci include international agreements, UN conventions, immigration, and refugee
policies.
Required Core Methods Courses:
534 - Praxis of Intergroup Dialogue: Students design, plan, implement, and evaluate intergroup
dialogue sessions as peer facilitators. Students facilitate intergroup dialogue in conjunction with SOC W
504. Focuses on intensive in-vivo instruction, consultation, and supervision of facilitators.
538 - Critical Empowerment Practice with Multi-ethnic Communities: Immigrants & Refugees:
Principles of empowering practice, critical analyses of models of multiculturalism and paradigms of
knowledge and practice proven problematic in our increasingly diverse society. Assists students in
developing empowering practice values, knowledge, and skills for work in multi-ethnic communities.
Recommended:
584 – Multicultural Mental Health (CCIP Students will have priority for this course.)
582 – Interpersonal Violence and Trauma
570 – Anti-racist Organizing for Social and Economic change
Potential Practicum Site Examples:
 Asian Counseling and Referral Service
(ACRS)
 Chief Seattle Club
 Consejo Counseling and Referral Services
 City of Seattle: Race & Social Justice
Initiative & DON
 Communities in Schools
 Community Alliance for Global Justice
 Counseling Center for Sexual Minorities
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Edmonds School District (Latina Outreach
Program)
Northwest Immigrant Rights Project
Intercommunity Peace and Justice Center
Lutheran Community Services NW
Youth Eastside Services
Solid Ground/Statewide Poverty Action
Network
Core Concentration Faculty:
Gino Aisenberg, Ratnesh Nagda, Sue Sohng, Stan DeMello (Field Education Rep.), Tracy Harachi, Nancy
Farwell, Scott Winn, Diana Pearce, Amelia Gavin
HEALTH PRACTICE
Faculty Contact Info: TARYN LINDHORST (tarynlin@uw.edu)
This specialization prepares students for direct social work practice roles in health care settings. Policy
and methods courses focus on decreasing long-standing disparities in health outcomes by helping
students to assess cultural influences on health; recognizing the interconnections of physical and
psychological health for individuals, families and communities; and preparing students to be leaders of
organizational change in complex, multi-disciplinary health care settings. The specialization prepares
practitioners with the knowledge and skills necessary to work within a wide array of health care
settings, including hospitals, community clinics, hospice/home care and long term care facilities.
Special focus is placed on short-term, brief interventions with individuals and families, and effective
collaboration within interprofessional teams. Students in this concentration must take a Policy/Service
course and two Core Methods courses. Students in the Health concentration are also required to take
SOCW 571, Assessment of Mental Disorders to become familiar with the medical diagnostic categories
of mental illness.
Required Policy/Services Course:
528 - Health Policy/Services: Examines the organization, policies, and services of U.S. healthcare system
from a social justice framework. Topics include the U.S. healthcare system's historical development,
differential access to health and healthcare, healthcare system reform, and the analysis of healthcare
policy from contrasting ideological perspectives.
Health Specialization - Required Core Methods Courses:
540 - Advanced Social Work Practice in Health Settings I: Teaches theory and strengths-based practice
within interprofessional health care settings from bio-pyschosocial, family systems, multi-cultural,
contextual, and lifespan perspectives. Advances skills in conducting assessments and interventions to
support individuals and families experiencing pain and loss associated with trauma and acute or
chronic illness.
541 - Advanced Social Work Practice in Health Settings II: Teaches health care theory and practice skills
relevant to working with adults and children in a variety of health care settings, using biopsychosocial,
contextual, multicultural, interdisciplinary, and lifespan perspectives. Advances skills in adherence
assessment, ethical decision-making, discharge planning, cross-cultural and cross-professional practice,
and counseling regarding life-threatening illness.
571 - Assessment of Mental Disorders: Provides basic knowledge and skills to assess mental disorders
and improve critical thinking concerning assessment and diagnosis. Emphasizes the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) for its system of symptom description and
classification. Examines challenges of methodological implications of mental health assessment across
race, gender, and ethnicity.
Recommended:
557 – Caring for Persons with Life-Limiting Illnesses (Health Students will have priority for this course)
572 – Chemical Dependency
Training: Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk (one day training offered in the Spring Quarter)
Potential Practicum Site Examples:
 UWMC – NICU, Women’s clinic and
Medical/Surgical Services
 Providence Hospice / Stepping Stones
Pediatric Palliative Care and Hospice
 Swedish Family Medicine Clinic, Psychooncology and Emergency Dept.
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VA Medical Center -- Rehabilitation
(Traumatic Brain Injury), Oncology Inpatient
and Outpatient , Palliative Care
Seattle Children's Hospital Adolescent
Medicine, Endocrinology Service , Oncology
Harborview Medical Center Intensive Care
Unit (ICU)
Core Concentration Faculty: Taryn Lindhorst, Karina Walters, J’May Rivara, Brian Giddens, Gunnar
Almgren, Wendy Lustbader, Bill Etnyre, Bonnie Shultz, Megan Moore, Alice Ryan (Field Education Rep.)
MENTAL HEALTH
Faculty Contact Info: JON CONTE (contej@uw.edu)
The mental health specialization prepares students to work in a variety of settings and roles to
enhance the psychosocial functioning of individuals. Settings include a range of public mental health
agencies and programs where the mental health of individuals is a focus; including public mental
health agencies, community counseling and therapy programs, family service agencies, health, child
welfare, and correctional programs. Building on the core values of social work including social justice,
cultural competence, evidence based practice, and the primacy of the therapeutic relationship in
creating a context for change, the concentration prepares students to assess mental health
functioning, manage the change process, use effective interventions, and evaluate the impact of
interventions. Students learn to manage the professional relationship and helping process consistent
with the ethical standards of social work, clinical theory, and principles of social work direct practice.
Students in this concentration must take a Policy/Service course and 2 Methods courses. Students in
the Mental Health concentration are also required to take the elective 571 Assessment of Mental
Disorders.
Required Policy/Services Course:
529 - Mental Health Policy/Services: Mental health policy trends and organization of services at
national, state, and local levels reflected in legislative, regulatory, and institutional policies. Provides
historical perspective on the development of U.S. mental health policies and services. Discusses
specific areas of intersystem linkages in terms of equitable access and empowerment.
Required Core Methods Courses:
544 - Clinical Social Work with Individuals: Theory and Practice I: Focuses on key concepts underlying
direct practice. Topics include the therapeutic relationship, therapeutic listening, the ground rules,
transference, counter transference, psychological defenses, resistance, phases of treatment,
transference, countertransference, and vicarious trauma.
545 – Clinical Social Work with Individuals: Theory and Practice II: Focuses on the use of interpretation,
obstacles to treatment, intervention techniques, case formulations that link assessment and
intervention, monitoring client progress, and on selected theories of therapy.
571 - Assessment of Mental Disorders: Provides basic knowledge and skills to assess mental disorders
and improve critical thinking concerning assessment and diagnosis. Emphasizes the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-IV) for its system of symptom description and
classification. Examines challenges of methodological implications of mental health assessment across
race, gender, and ethnicity.
Recommended:
542 - Recovery-Oriented Social Work Practice in Community Mental Health (Mental Health Students
will have priority for this course.)
Training: Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk (one day training offered in the Spring Quarter)
Potential Practicum Site Examples:
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Seattle Counseling Service for Sexual
Minorities
Harborview Sexual Assault and Traumatic
Stress Clinic, and Inpatient Psych
VA Medical Center Mental Health Clinic and
Addictions; inpatient PTSD Service
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Sound Mental Health - Adult Counseling
and CCAP Program (Forensic and Addiction)
UW Hospital and Medical Center Emergency Department
Downtown Emergency Service Center PACT and SAGE program
Core Concentration Faculty: Jon Conte, Jen Stuber, Karina Walters, Bill Etnyre, Megan Moore, Kendra
Roberson, Melissa Martinson, Wendy Lustbader, Stacey DeFries (Field Education Rep.)