Competency In Clinical Social Work

Abstract

Clinical social work, with more than 200,000 clinical-level licensees, is the major provider of behavioral healthcare in the United States. This publication is intended to be comprehensive and definitive in describing the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that constitute the competent practice of clinical social work. Competency is identified across the various phases by which a practitioner develops, and in specific terms of practice components and indicators of proficiency in clinical social work.

Introduction

Characteristics of the Profession

The Center for Clinical Social Work, Inc., sets forth herein the knowledge, skills, and behaviors that are necessary for ethical client-centered culturally-sensitive practice of clinical social work, ranged along a life-cycle of professional growth. Our profession, the major provider of behavioral healthcare in the U. S., has a duty to identify its own standards and practice forms. In so doing, we hope to achieve the following objectives:

to identify the practice components of clinical social work

to relate professional development to practice competency

to identify the indicators by which clinical social workers may be recognized as having achieved certain levels of proficiency.

The process of professional development is described emphasizing the first five years of an individual’s post-graduate practice. Major clinical skills (relationship engagement and management, assessment, treatment planning, intervention, outcome evaluation), related to five dimensions (values, knowledge, identity and use of self, disciplined approach, and practice skills), are ranged across three levels of development, as follows:

entry level: the period (usually two years), post-master’s degree, in which the new clinician practices under clinical supervision;

intermediate level: the period (usually the next three years) in which the clinician broadens the range and raises the skill level of his/her practice;

advanced level: clinician becomes proficient in practice specialties to the point that he/she practices as an expert.

There is a crucial need for the information we present, since the profession is subject to definitions and descriptions that were not generated by clinical social workers but that have found their way into legislation,