Systemic Practice in Applied Social Work

Develop a thorough understanding of the systemic approach to social work with children and adults. Enhance your skills around working with people in their community. Learn to assess different systemic models, to apply them in practice, and to evaluate interventions based upon them.

Social workers should use a systemic approach to delivering and managing services and when working directly with children and adults, as well as their families, according to the Munro Report (2011). This means that social workers need skills around working with people in the context of their family, community or ecology, so that the systems around the service user can support them.

Our course takes a theoretical and critical approach to developing skills in systemic practice. This includes the evaluation of the context, how to conduct systemic interviews, and designing and implementing systemic interventions.

Over the course of four study days, you’ll learn about family systems theory, the family life-cycle, and family breakdown. You’ll also cover the range of models of systemic practice, focusing on those for which there are assessment protocols and research instruments for monitoring the effectiveness of interventions. And you'll learn to apply and critique these models in social work practice.

Course content:

• theoretical approaches to systemic practice
• professional codes and regulating conduct
• analysis (including risk analysis, decision-making and competing claims)
• designing and critiquing systemic interventions
• measurement scales for evaluating the effectiveness of interventions
• theoretical approaches to evaluating social work practice.

You’ll attend four full study days on our campus in Cambridge over one semester, as well as doing some independent, self-directed study. Your employer will need to provide at least three to five study days.

Assessment is by way of a patchwork text to evidence the use of systemic practice in the workplace. It will be broken down into three parts: a systemic assessment; a systemic intervention; and an evaluation of the outcomes.