Evidence-Based Practice Skills in Social Work Education: Preparing more skillful social workers
“Why did I never learn this?” “I have been in therapy for years; why did my therapist never teach me this?” These were questions I was asked too often during my time as a clinician for an adult partial hospitalization program. My clients were referencing the concrete therapeutic skills they had learned during Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) skills groups. Unfortunately, many social workers are never taught how to implement clinical evidence-based practices, such as DBT skills, during their graduate education. This inadequate clinical education leads to unprepared and unconfident mental health providers. This presentation will explore how evidence-based practices are currently taught in clinical social work education and identify the deficits of these teaching methods. Then, a conceptualization for using experiential learning techniques within the social work classroom will be explored. Finally, a DBT skills group-informed design that uses experiential learning techniques for teaching various clinical evidence-based practices will be discussed.