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[James] The extended degree program at the UW School of Social Work is an MSW program
so it's a considered the terminal degree in social work.
[Taryn] Social work is much more than just say therapy or just a certain kind of work
say in child welfare so I think that that's one of the exciting things about becoming
a social worker is you do have a lot of options about what kind of work you're going to do
when you get done. [Tessa] You can work with individuals, with
families, in policy, with communities. It's really interesting how people move around
in social work. [Taryn] The extended degree program pulls
more people that are actually working in the field right now who have some experience in
social services into the program. [James] Many of our students work full time
when they begin the program, and it's quite possible to work full time through the first
three quarters of the program. They can either be in a multigenerational practice concentration,
or an integrative health, mental health concentration. [Tessa] If you're going into the multigenerational
families track, generally you're going to work with families that are involved in maybe
public child welfare, going to be working in counseling situations with families, families
that are have family members that are living with disabilities.
[Taryn] Our other concentration is focused more on a set of problems. And so this is
a different way of thinking about social work and so the problems that we are focused on
are health and mental health problems. And that's one of the reason why we created an
integrated health and mental health concentration here because there's very few problems of
the mind that don't have some effect on the body, and very few problems with the body
that are not also effecting the way we think and behave. So the health and mental health
concentration is really dealing with problems related to physical and mental illness.
[James] We really work to admit a cohort that will be very diverse and bring many different
strengths to the program. People that will be able to learn and teach from each other,
people that bring unique backgrounds, talents and skills to the process of transformation.
[Tessa] I think at this school we really emphasize how much you can learn from differences, how
much you can learn from being together. And we don't all agree, and we all have different
opinions and that's ok, and that's better than ok, it's good, we want that.
[Taryn] They really appreciate the sense of having colleagues that they've developed through
their school experience, in addition to the people that they meet in the field as well.
[James] I think in order to do direct practice well you're constantly transforming yourself
and you're constantly changing, and developing. And if you're not doing that, if you're not
self-reflective, if you're not developing your critical thinking skills, you're not
becoming a professional social worker. [Tessa] They always come out of the program
saying, "I can't believe how much I learned from this program, and how different I look
at my practice, how different I look at the families I'm working with." It really brings
another level of depth to their practice and thinking about social work. It's really fun
to see.