RHODE ISLAND COLLEGE
SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK
LEARNING CONTRACT:
SECOND YEAR CLINICAL MSW STUDENTS
This is your personal plan that will structure this year’s field placement. It guides you and the agency and helps assure that your learning needs are addressed. You and your field instructor should use it weekly to assess your progress together.
Student’s name:
Phone(s):
E-mail(s):
Field placement agency’s name:
Phone:
Address:
Primary MSW field instructor’s name and degree:
Phone(s):
E-mail(s):
Secondary field instructor’s name and degree:
Phone(s):
E-mail(s):
Is this placement in the student’s employing agency: ___ yes ___ no
If yes, please attach the written plan describing how the field placement and the job are separated (e.g., the hours for each, where the student sits for each, who supervises each)
Every second year MSW student must spend 300 hours each semester in the placement.
Date on which the placement begins:
Date on which the placement ends:
Days and hours each week for the student to be in placement:
Every student must receive two hours per week of field instruction supervision. One hour must be uninterrupted one-on-one with the primary MSW field instructor. The second hour may be either group or individual with either the primary or secondary field instructor. Please specify the days of the week, times and with whom field instruction supervision occurs:
First hour:
Second hour:
Every student must complete a minimum of two process recordings each semester. Please specify the dates when these are due:
Fall semester: first ______second ______
Spring semester: first ______second ______
Please specify the agency’s expectations of the student regarding holidays, illness, personal leave requests, make-up time for time lost, coverage during absences:
***
Below are the skill areas to work on in your second year clinical placement:
Skills for forming and maintaining relationships with clients
1. Engage clients
2. Explain my role clearly
3. Explain the client's role clearly
Skills for responding to diversity and oppression
4. Intervene with people from different ethnic groups
5. Intervene with people from different oppressed groups
6. Address culture and oppression in clinical interviews with clients
Skills for analyzing and changing agency and social policies
7. Clearly state how agency policies affect clients
8. Clearly state how social policies affect clients
9. Advocate within the agency for clients
10. Advocate with other organizations on behalf of clients
11. Seek policy changes within the agency or in other systems
Skills for integrating research and practice
12. Use research findings to guide assessment and intervention
13. State client problems, needs, goals, interventions and outcomes in concrete, observable, behavioral, measurable terms
14. Collect concrete, observable, measurable data in every case to assess progress towards intervention goals
15. Create evaluation tools specific to the case
16. Use standardized tools to monitor client progress
17. Use structured thought records
18. Use self anchored scales
Skills for managing social work values and ethics
19. Identify my own values
20. Know what is in the NASW Code of Ethics
21. Compare agency practices with the NASW Code of Ethics
22. Adhere to the NASW Code of Ethics
23. Identify ethical dilemmas
24. Use ethical decision making protocols to analyze ethical dilemmas logically
25. Follow confidentiality guidelines
26. Obtain informed consent
27. Maintain ethical boundaries with clients and colleagues
28. Recognize and avoid dual relationships
29. Recognize and avoid conflicts of interest
Skills for conscious use of self in the clinical role
30. Recognize and explore my countertransference
31. State how my countertransference affects my behavior with colleagues and clients
32. Identify transference issues in each case.
Skills for integrating theory and practice
33. Clearly state the theory that guides each assessment and intervention
34. Use empowerment theory and a strengths perspective
35. Use psychodynamic theory and methods
36. Use attachment theory
37. Use cognitive theory and methods
38. Use behavioral theory and methods
39. Use family systems theory and methods
40. Use narrative therapy concepts and methods
41. Use motivational interviewing concepts and methods
Skills for using multiple lenses and tools, grounded in the above theories, in assessment, intervention, and evaluation of outcomes
42. Use eco-maps
43. Use social network maps
44. Use culturagram
45. Use family maps
46. Use genograms
47. Use timelines
48. Use the DSM-IV-TR / DSM-V
Skills for working with different size client systems
49. Do clinical assessment and intervention with an individual client
50. Do clinical assessment and intervention with a parent/child dyad
51. Do clinical assessment and intervention with a couple
52. Do clinical assessment and intervention with a group
Skills for helping clients who are coping with:
53. Mood Disorders
54. Anxiety
55. Loss
56. Substance abuse and dependence
57. Interpersonal violence
58. Oppression (on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, income, race, ability, disability, ethnicity)
Skills for facilitating an effective termination process
59. Recognize and articulate termination issues in each case
60. Complete the worker’s tasks in the termination process with client
Professional work habit skills
61. Be well organized
62. Complete tasks on time
63. Complete documentation thoroughly and accurately
64. Write grammatically, clearly, logically
65. Speak clearly, grammatically, logically
66. Seek supervisory input
67. Respond to feedback nondefensively
68. Use feedback
69. Assert opinions respectfully and clearly
70. Present a case for clinical consultation
71. Offer comments in staff meetings and clinical consultations
72. Be a member of an interdisciplinary team
Instructions for writing your learning contract:
Above is the list of skills you will work on this year in field. You may add to that list, based on your unique learning needs. By each skill, specify (a) the learning activity you will engage in to work on that skill and (b) the concrete, observable evidence of your progress in developing that skill.
Note: Activities are things one can see you do. Examples of activities are: I will do a literature review on how to engage reluctant clients, will make a list of readings, will read those, will write notes that summarize the readings, and will discuss the notes in supervision.
Note: Examples of concrete, observable, behavioral evidence of how well you did a learning activity include things such as: written assessments, written progress notes, written treatment plans, written supervisory agendas, written logs of topics discussed and plans made in supervision, completed forms in client records, task sheets that list what the student will do each week and what tasks were accomplished each week, videotapes of clinical interviews, minutes written of meetings attended, process recordings.
Note: You may use either an outline or table format. Both are illustrated below.
***
An Example of a Learning Contract That Uses an Outline Format
For example, using the outline format, for the first skill set (“Relationship, Engagement and Contracting”), your personal learning contract might look something like this:
Forming and maintaining relationships with clients
Skill: Engage clients
Activity: I will have a caseload of five different clients with whom I will meet weekly at the agency
Evidence of progress: (1) My clients will show up for appointments with me, as evidenced by my written progress notes. I will write a weekly process recording that addresses issues in my relationships with my clients. I will discuss in weekly supervision my relationships with my clients. I will write in a weekly personal journal about how my relationships with my clients are going, and share this with my field instructor. [the words in italics are highlighted here to draw your attention to the concrete, observable behaviors that will be used to evaluate the activity]
Skill: Explain my role clearly
Activity: I will record in my written progress notes what I said to each client about my role, how often we will meet, and what we will do when we meet.
Evidence of progress: My field instructor and I will review my progress notes each week. I will also do at least one process recording of how I contracted with a client. In my weekly written supervision agenda and log I will record when I discussed relationship, engagement and contracting issues.
***
An Example of a Learning Contract That Uses a Grid Format
Note: You are welcome, instead of using the above outline format, to use the following grid format if that works better for you:
The skill I will work onRelationship, Engagement and Contracting Skills
Engage clients
Explain my role clearly
Explain the client's role clearly
(and so on….) / The learning activity I will engage in to work on that skill
______
Meet weekly with each of five clients
With each client I will explicitly describe what my role is, how often and where we will meet, what we will do when we meet
I will tell all clients that it's important for them to tell me whenever they feel I do not understand, we are not working on their goals, or our approach is missing the mark in their view. / The concrete, observable evidence of my progress in developing that skill
______
______
· Written progress notes for each client after each contact
· One process recording per week on a client interaction of my choice
· Written supervision agenda and written supervision log will document what I have discussed with my field instructor
· Written weekly task sheets will document what I planned to do and what I accomplished each week in the placement
· Weekly written entry in a personal journal reflecting on countertransference and use of self
· Written assessment in each client’s file
· Written treatment plan in each client’s file
· Written progress note
· Process recording
· Discussion of this in supervision, as recorded in supervisory agenda and log
· Progress notes
· Process recordings
· Supervision agenda
· Supervision log
· My countertransference journal
Your approved learning contract must be signed by the following people:
Primary Field Instructor’s signature: Date:
Secondary Field Instructor’s signature (if applicable): Date:
Student’s signature: Date:
Field liaison/academic advisor’s signature: Date:
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Clinical
Edited 10/2/13