Program Summary:  This course offers clinical guidance and discussion for mental health clinicians who work and collaborate with African American men.  The course highlights the importance of Afrocentric values, including mutuality, emotional connection, and spirituality.  Challenges of marginalization, oppression, and racism are explored along with other barriers to care.  The course offers three frameworks for practice:  social determinants of health, intersectionality, and narrative practice.

This course is recommended for social workers and counselors and is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice.   Read the complete description of this course…..

Program Summary:  This is a thought-provoking course on transracial adoption and parenting and includes two readings:  Transracial Adoption as Oppression:  Modern Practice in Context and Parenting in Racially, Culturally, and Ethnically Diverse Adoptive Families.

The first reading explores transracial adoption in the context of its oppressive history.  The reading highlights the cycles of harm and trauma experienced by children of color from past to present, offering examples that include the Orphan Train Movement, Indian Boarding Schools, slavery, the foster care system, and private adoption.  The coercion of biological mothers, the commodification of children, and the lack of culturally competent services are critiqued.  Recommendations for practice are offered and include culturally competent services, the recruitment of racially diverse prospective parents, the promotion of bi-culturalism, and listening to the voices of adoptees.

The second reading examines parenting in racially, culturally, and ethnically diverse adoptive families.  The reading offers considerations for starting a multicultural family, strategies for embracing life as a racially, culturally, and ethnically diverse family, and how to prepare children for racism.

This course is recommended for social workers and counselors and is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice.   Read the complete description of this course…..

Program Summary:  This course offers a heuristic or a guide for White social workers for anti-racist social work practice that includes three sets of practices:  REcover, UNcover, and DIScover.  REcover practices seek to help White social workers shift to a window of tolerance with activities like brief pauses and paced breathing.  UNcover practices seek to help White social workers critically examine beliefs, biases, and power. DIScover practices seek to help White social workers look at what is possible, while resisting the urge to fix and control.  The course emphasizes the importance of learning in relationship and holding space for racialized discomfort.

This course is recommended for social workers and is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice.   Read the complete description of this course…..

Program Summary:  This thought-provoking course explores the relationship between social work and the child welfare system and critiques the federal Title IV-E training program and the ethical conflicts involved in training MSW students to regulate families.  The course examines the forces of racism, classism, misogyny, and injustice within the child welfare system.  The course suggests that the relationship between child welfare and social work must be reimagined and recreated in a new way that will allow social workers to meet the needs of children and families while also upholding the ethical principle of social justice.

Social justice is a core value of the social work profession, and the NASW Code of Ethics establishes the ethical principle to challenge social injustice.

Value: Social Justice
Ethical Principle: Social workers challenge social injustice.  Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people.  Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice.  These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity.  Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.  NASW Code of Ethics

This course is recommended for social workers and is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice.  This course is not recommended for NBCC ethics credit.
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Program Summary:  This course examines the social work profession’s commitment to social justice with a research study of 310 MSW students, exploring which individual factors were most associated with activism and engagement.  The concept of intersectionality is highlighted and provides a framework for understanding how individuals hold multiple, overlapping identities that result in various combinations of discrimination, oppression, and privilege.  The course finds that an increased understanding of privilege, power, and the intersecting systems of oppression is required in our efforts to elevate social justice. Social justice is a core value of the social work profession, and the NASW Code of Ethics establishes the ethical principle to challenge social injustice.

Value: Social Justice
Ethical Principle: Social workers challenge social injustice.  Social workers pursue social change, particularly with and on behalf of vulnerable and oppressed individuals and groups of people.  Social workers’ social change efforts are focused primarily on issues of poverty, unemployment, discrimination, and other forms of social injustice.  These activities seek to promote sensitivity to and knowledge about oppression and cultural and ethnic diversity.  Social workers strive to ensure access to needed information, services, and resources; equality of opportunity; and meaningful participation in decision making for all people.  NASW Code of Ethics

This course is recommended for social workers and is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice.  This course is not recommended for NBCC ethics credit.
Read the complete description of this course…..

Program Summary:  This course explores experiences of institutional racism, structural uncertainties, and racial microaggressions among people who are Black.  The course examines the concept of minority stress and demonstrates that people who are Black disproportionately experience both macro- and micro-level racial stressors which contribute to minority stress.   Using secondary data analysis, the course shows a positive correlation between racial stressors and minority stress among people who are Black and advocates for micro- and macro-level changes.

This course is recommended for social workers, counselors, and therapists is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice. Read the complete description of this course…..

Program Summary:   This course explores potential implicit bias in healthcare by looking at stigmatizing language in the healthcare record. The course highlights a study using machine learning to analyze electronic health records using 15 different patient descriptors:  (non-) adherent, aggressive, agitated, angry, challenging, combative, (non-)compliant, confront, (non-) cooperative, defensive, exaggerate, hysterical, (un-)pleasant, refuse, and resist.  A discussion of results and recommendations are given.

This course is recommended for social workers, counselors, and therapists.

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Program Summary:  This course applies the theory of intersectionality to women veterans and explores how women veterans often experience multiple forms of oppression such as racism, sexism, and classism.  The course examines how these experiences of oppression accumulate and affect identity formation.   Intersectionality is offered as an meaningful way to increase our understanding of women veterans’ lives and experiences.  Important concepts are discussed including markers of difference, institutional betrayal, horizontal hostility, and individual solutions.

This course is recommended for social workers, counselors, and therapists and is appropriate for beginning and intermediate levels of practice.

Read the complete description of this course…..