Effectively Preparing MSW Students for Integrated Care Settings

Overview: Integrated behavioral healthcare is becoming increasingly important to social work practice. The program described was designed to increase the number of MSW social workers who provide trauma-informed, culturally relevant, evidence-based practices at integrated healthcare settings. A pre- and post-survey design was used with non-participating MSW students as a control group.Proposal text: Integrated behavioral healthcare is becoming increasingly important to social work practice. This training program was designed to enhance students’ knowledge, skills, and professional development by providing a variety of learning opportunities in addition to their regular MSW education. The program’s goal was to increase the number of trained social workers who provide trauma-informed, culturally relevant, evidence-based behavioral health prevention and intervention practices at hospitals/clinics, schools, and homeless serving agencies. The project recruited and trained 110 graduate-level social work students over a four-year period. Following graduation, participating students committed to working in integrated behavioral health care and community settings, both with vulnerable populations and in underserved areas.
Participants completed experiential learning modules, training sessions, and related behavioral health workshops prior to and during the final MSW field semester. These learning opportunities furthered their knowledge regarding effectively serving vulnerable populations and underserved areas. All project learning opportunities were designed to build behavioral health related knowledge and skills when working in integrated behavioral health settings. Participants were organized into cohorts who collectively participated in the program’s enhanced learning opportunities in the semester prior to their final field semester and during their final field semester of the graduate program.
The researchers utilized a two-group pre-post design to evaluate the effectiveness of the project. Quantitative evaluation data were collected at the initiation and completion of the project for each cohort in the training condition, with concurrent collection of survey data from control group members. Self-report surveys were employed to evaluate the project’s effectiveness in: 1) enhancing participant knowledge and skill attainment and 2) increasing understanding of attitudes and behaviors related to cultural competence.
Specific hypotheses guiding evaluation of the project were as follows:
H1. Project participants will reflect greater levels of increased knowledge, skills & abilities than the control group.
H2. Project participants will reflect greater levels of increased cultural competency than the control group.
24 ANCOVAs were completed for each individual scale of the knowledge and cultural competence measures. Results of the ANCOVAS revealed that the relevance, knowledge, and training ratings were statistically significant for all 7 competencies assessed in the knowledge measure. On the cultural competency assessment, two of the three subscales were statistically significant: Communication Styles and Values and Attitudes.
Results reflect the value of the project’s expanded training. Across all measures the training group indicated significant gains as compared to the control group. This adds to the literature that frequently lacks a control group. Of particular value to integrated care training projects is increased knowledge and skills in cultural competency, trauma-informed care, and communication.
Recommendations for further research are outlined, including to explore to what extent graduates transfer their enhanced knowledge to the workplace and integrating methods to triangulate the findings.