Peer Support in a ​Recovery-Oriented Setting

Peer support is not achievable outside of a recovery-oriented system of care. This capstone project will identify the strengths and challenges of peer support in a behavioral health setting and will address the research question: How do you define, supervise, and train the peer support worker role in a behavioral health recovery setting? It defines recovery as defined by SAMSHA and will address peer support within this context.

This capstone will lead the journey on the history of mental health recovery, and historical gains in the mental health consumer movement, it will address mental health parity. It is a collection of three distinct papers that each stand alone in their own merit but collectively address peer support in a recovery-oriented setting. The unique view of this collection of papers looks at the current consensus of literature “Peer support is beneficial but proceed with caution”.

This collection of papers will highlight the “peer support is beneficial” but look specifically at “the proceed with caution” and addresses the findings identified in the capstone to propose and apply a solution to the identified challenges within the field by proposing the creation of a nonprofit called RESILIENCE, that will offer peer support, and consultation for organizations engaging in peer support, with program development, implementation, and evaluation.

Identification and removal of barriers to VA mental health treatment for Black female veterans

The Department of Veteran Affairs (VA) is the largest integrated healthcare system in the nation. It is seen by many as a safety net for the nation’s veterans. Research has been conducted with both male and female veterans to identify barriers they may experience while seeking mental health treatment from the VA. However, the veteran population is more than diverse than just looking at differences in gender. Females are the fastest growing group pf veterans. Currently they make up 11% with a projection of being 18% of the population by the year 2046. That being said, female veterans are not a homogeneous group. Forty-three percent of female veterans identify as a member of a racial/ethnic group. Those identifying as Black were at 12%, representing the largest single racial/ethnic group. The goal of this capstone project is to identify barriers Black female veteran encounter to accessing mental health treatment from the VA. This project also examines the current approach while presenting a new conceptual framework that acknowledges these barriers and a culturally responsive approach to removing them.

Interdisciplinary Evaluation of Social Workers in Public Education

Social workers practice in various settings outside of their discipline. These host settings may present challenges for social workers due to inadequate supervision and performance evaluation often provided by a leader without knowledge of the field’s ethics and professional standards. The public education system is one of these settings.

This capstone project explores the current supervision and evaluation frameworks for non-traditional staff within schools and proposes a best-practice solution to improve the experiences of school social workers. Barriers to effective evaluation at the individual and organizational levels are identified and the impacts on the professional growth of these staff are defined. The National Evaluation for School Social Work Practice is utilized to propose an interdisciplinary approach to performance evaluations for these staff that blends transactional and transformational leadership styles.

This approach defines professional competencies and standards assessed by building administrators, such as principals and assistant principals, and those that are more effectively assessed by a social work supervisor. Utilizing an interdisciplinary framework for supervision and performance evaluation equally emphasizes the needs of the organization and the professional to improve outcomes for students, staff, and the school community. Although specific to public education, the proposed framework can serve as a model for other host settings to improve the experiences and job satisfaction of social workers in other sectors.

Embodying Freedom: Addressing Mental Health in the Black Church Utilizing Trauma Informed Care

The presentation will explore the history of the Black church and the negative impact of generational trauma. Mental health disparities will be identified and explored to increase awareness and dispel stigma in Black church communities. This presentation focuses on Afrocentric and systems theory to analyze historical context, modern representation, and provide future implications for collaborative faith-based health resources.?

Restoreth My Soul is a new trauma-informed care program for Black churches developed by the presenter. Restoreth My Soul will be launched in September 2023. The program aims to create conversations about mental health in local/international African American church communities through webinars and virtual conferences.

Although these conversations are uncommon, Restoreth My Soul intends to provide resources to reduce the members and leaders silently suffering as result of their trauma. The intended outcome of the program is the educate, evaluate, and implement mental health policies in Black congregations. For more information about RMS sign up for the mailing list at www.chelecebrown.com.

Deep Community Partnerships: The Future of Community-Based Senior Services in a Value-Driven Era

This presentation will review three scholarly products that examine how chronically ill older adults interact with healthcare systems and senior service delivery systems in the United States. Product One examines how community-based senior programs that are funded by the Older Americans Act (OAA) positively impact health outcomes and promote health and wellness among the older adult population. Product Two examines how Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs), Managed Care Organizations (MCOs), Area Agencies on Aging (AAA) interact with the patient and with one another using the lens of Systems Theory.

Product Three examines best practices regarding care coordination among all systems that impact the older adult, uses a case example to discuss how care coordination addresses service gaps, and discusses strategies that organizational leaders can use among all systems to promote care coordination behaviors.

Current Best Practices in the Delivery of Online Social Work Education that Maximize Student Engagement and Success

The practice of online social work education at the college and university level goes back nearly as far as the mass propagation of internet access in the 1990s. Higher education has a history of working to accommodate students who work or otherwise have challenges being present at a brick-and-mortar campus during traditional working hours, Monday through Friday. Over the years, colleges and universities have offered evening and weekend classes, correspondence courses via the United States Postal Service, and even self-paced CD-ROM programs.

As internet access has increased over the decades, so has the amount of web-based social work courses and programs. With the arrival of Covid-19 in March 2020, institutes of higher learning had to quickly pivot to online instruction, and quickly adapt and utilize web-based learning management systems and media to engage and educate students. As higher education has returned to a new normal following Covid-related restrictions and lockdowns in the early 2020s, it is important to take a new look at the delivery of online social work education to ensure current best practices and innovations are in place to maximize student engagement and success in this important area of social work practice.

Exploring Social Worker Wellness: Balancing Individual Self-Care and the Responsibility of Leadership

This presentation will review three scholarly products that explore practitioner wellness in the context of the social work field. As the burnout rate among social workers is higher than in other professions, self-care and organizational wellness are promoted to combat this phenomenon. The first product, a systematic literature review, provides a foundation of information found in the current literature.

Social worker self-care and wellness are explored within education, organizations, and within the broader professional culture. The second product, a conceptual paper, promotes the idea of holistic practitioner wellness by viewing it through the lens of three theoretical frameworks with an emphasis on the impact of the workplace setting and leadership. The third product, a practice application paper, offers a wellness program for social work organizations.

This program was adapted using an existing framework identified in product one and applies the information synthesized in product two.

Clinician Survivors of Client Suicide: A Policy for Colleges and University Campuses

Being a clinician survivor of a client suicide is a devastating and tragic risk of working in the mental health field. Following the loss of a client to a completed suicide, the clinician survivor is left with personal and professional struggles. This presentation will provide an overview of a systemic literature review of clinician survivors of client suicide.

The literature review will focus on the significant experience that the loss of a client to a completed suicide has on a clinician. Theoretical perspectives will address the impact that a client’s suicide has on a clinician. Systems theory will provide an explanation of the clinician’s struggles following a loss of a client.

Wounded health theory offers the clinician survivor hope to transform from a wounded individual to a wounded healer following the client’s death to a completed suicide. A policy will be offered to support clinicians on a college or university campus following a client’s suicide using the steps from Crisis Incident Stress Management.

Decentering Privilege Via Clinical Social Work Supervision

Social Workers are often seen and valued in our society as change makers, especially related to social justice. While that presents as a shared value and focus across the field there is little research or guidance from social workers, specifically clinical social workers, about supervision frameworks that ensure anti-oppressive direct clinical care is being provided.

This presentation will showcase the history of this issue, important notations from the utilization of a systematic literature review, mentions of other attempts and supports to rectify this concern, a highlighting of anti-oppressive supervisory models created by clinicians from other clinical disciplines, an in depth case study and logic model that leads us to the five step supervisory framework created by University of Kentucky doctoral candidate, Rachel Buxbaum, to support the decentering of privilege via clinical social work supervision.

Serious Mental Illness Recovery: Seeing the Person Not the Stereotype

Serious mental illness (SMI) is heavily stigmatized by the public and within healthcare systems. This stigma can be a barrier to treatment and recovery, negatively impacting the person, their family, and the community. Becoming aware of the stigmatizing beliefs of clinicians and acknowledging implicit bias exists among clinicians is imperative to the success of treatment.

Through formulating and practicing an integrative approach to treatment, people with SMI can receive ethical and competent care. Social workers often serve at the forefront of care for vulnerable populations and can act as effective agents in changing the therapeutic dynamic with people with SMI.

Reclaiming Social Justice in Clinical Social Work: A Metatheoretical Supervision Model to Develop Justice-Oriented Practitioners

The promotion of human rights, equity, and social justice are central tenets in the social work discipline. However, as a profession, social work has experienced ideological fissures, leading to failures to capture the complexities of contextual and systemic influences in clinical practice. This capstone project seeks to address this dichotomy in education and practice by situating clinical supervision as the ideal pedagogical space for the development of justice-oriented practitioners.

In this presentation, the author will first report on the findings of a systematic literature review investigating the role of social justice in the salient clinical supervision literature. Next, the author will propose the rationale for a conceptual model for social justice–oriented clinical supervision. The Critical Relational Model (CRM) emerged during the analytic process, demonstrating the layered and contextual nature of clinical supervision (e.g.: sociocultural identities, power dynamics, systemic injustices).

Grounded in a constructionist metatheory and applied though a relational lens, the model draws from critical theories, critical pedagogy, anti-oppressive and decolonizing frameworks, while centering the supervisory relationship in the process of learning and growth. Last, the author describes how the model can be applied in clinical supervision to develop critical skills and meta–competencies, decolonize supervision, and promote epistemic justice. Beyond a supervision model, the CRM is a call to action.

Given the growing socio-political and racial tension in the US and emerging debates over the many manifestations of injustice, oppression, marginalization, discrimination, and human rights violations impacting individuals’ lived experiences, there has never been better time to reclaim social justice in the clinical arena.