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Seeing a need for more trauma-informed social workers, Mason’s College of Public Health began a summer fellowship to provide the workforce training that graduate students were looking for.
In June of 2022, a group of Master of Social Work (MSW) Advanced Level students began a fellowship to receive training and diversify their clinical skills. Through this initiative, participants learn how to recognize distressing experiences that may have occurred in a client’s past and how to provide specific treatments based on their individual needs.
The fellowship is grounded in the core principles of ethical and social justice-oriented clinical social work practice in a health setting using an integrative model of therapeutic and community-based interventions at the individual and small group levels.
Trauma-informed care is an approach that trains social work practitioners to proactively address traumatic experiences in clients and provide treatment appropriate for trauma-related behavioral health problems.
The fellowship prepares clinicians to work with various populations such as veterans, immigrants, sexual and emotional abuse survivors, and members of the LGBTQIA+ community with the goal of using trauma-informed care and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) to help clients reach their goals.
“This fellowship has supported my capacity to serve underserved populations because I have practiced how to meet people where they are, how to introduce DBT to folks who have never heard of it before, and how to modify sessions to meet the needs of clients,” said Keesee. Dialectical behavioral therapy (DBT) is an evidence-based treatment to teach life skills including mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness skills, emotion regulation skills, and distress tolerance skills.
Vicki Kirsch, associate professor of Social Work in the College of Public Health, leads the fellowship and utilizes her expertise in DBT to mold the next generation of well-rounded social work clinicians.
Participants note how the experience has made their job search easier and given them greater confidence to serve clients. Keese, who currently works with veterans, values the skills she has learned and intends to implement them as a full-time case manager with the Veterans Affairs Medical Center after graduation.
“I was able to lead a DBT group for veterans in a residential treatment setting,” Keesee said. “My confidence to lead this group was rooted in the skills I learned during the trauma-informed fellowship.”
The Social Work Department will be offering this Summer Trauma-Informed Fellowship for advanced MSW students this Summer 2023.
Additional reporting by Brandon Cantrell.