Clinical Social Work

Guided by a person-in-environment perspective and respect for human diversity, the Clinical Social Work Training Program in the Department of Psychiatry provides internships for area graduate and undergraduate social work schools. Our field placements combine the learning of evidence based knowledge with the teaching of professional skills required to provide effective and ethical social work treatment in a mental health setting.

The practice content we teach is anchored in the social work profession and focuses on strengths, capacities, and resources of patient systems in relation to their broader environments. Students learn practices that encompass knowledge and skills to work with individuals, families, groups, and communities. This includes the opportunity to engage patients in an appropriate working relationship; help them identify problems, needs, resources, and assets; to conduct psychosocial assessments; and to plan and implement treatment or discharge plans.

Purposes of Social Work Internships

The purpose of our internship program is to prepare competent and effective social work professionals in the field of mental health. We accomplish this through the following:

• Providing our interns exposure to clinical practices at the forefront of the knowledge base of social work and related disciplines.
• Assisting our interns in learning the application of practice-relevant technology.
• Educating our interns about the importance of maintaining reciprocal relationships with social work practitioners, groups, organizations, and communities.
• Promoting our interns' ability to participate in professional and interdisciplinary collaboration.
• Preparing our interns to practice with individuals, families, groups, and communities.
• Preparing our interns to practice without discrimination, with respect, and with knowledge and skills related to clients’ age, class, culture, disability, gender, marital status, race, religion, and sexual orientation.

Our social work supervisory staff has a range of expertise in treating patients across the life-span. Areas of specialization include diagnosis and treatment of anxiety, depression and psychotic disorders, as well as personality disorders. Our staff all work within multidisciplinary settings to provide the best team-based clinical care. Social workers in psychiatry are also integrally involved in the teaching mission of the department and provide education, supervision and consultation to multidisciplinary trainees in medicine, nursing and psychology.

Tasha Wilson, LMSW
Coordinator, Psychiatric Internship Program
Phone: (585) 275-3518