The Practicum Companion for Social Work: Integrating Class and Field Work

The ideal companion for the first field/practicum experience, this text guides students through their placement while reinforcing the link between social work theory and practice. It includes detailed information on the field/practicum experience from start to finish.

 

Topics covered include establishing a professional identity; working safely; making the most of practicum supervision; organizational issues; micro, mezzo, and macro social work practice; social work and the legal system; and terminating effectively from the practicum.  To make the material more accessible, the book follows the progress of five students–Ben, Cameron, Corina, Lauren and Rosa–as they move through their own practicum experiences. Their real-life stories help spur discussion while allowing students to apply the knowledge, skills, and/or issues presented in the text. To further stimulate critical thinking and discussion, the text provides discussion questions and practice applications in each unit. Many of the applications were developed in conjunction with agency-based field instructors.

The Practicum Companion for Social Work: Integrating Class and Field Work
Second Edition
By: Julie M. Birkenmaier & Marla Berg-Weger

Overview:
An ideal companion for the field/practicum experience, this book guides students through their field placement while reinforcing the link between social work theory and practice. It includes detailed information on the field/practicum experience from start to finish, including: establishing a professional identity; working safely; making the most of practicum supervision; organizational issues; micro, mezzo, and macro social work practice; social work and the legal system; and terminating effectively from the practicum.

What Reviewers Have to Say…

The applications are excellent. What I particularly like is that they are not academic, but practical. This text is excellent and thorough and could be used for graduate students, unlike most of the existing practicum texts. I am going to recommend this text to our students for their foundation field experience even though we do not have a seminar in the MSW program. I am also going to recommend it to the undergraduate program director. It is the BEST that I have seen and can only get better when updated.

I have found this text to be very useful for first year graduate students who do not have a BSW and little or no prior social work practice experience. I appreciate the step-by-step approach used by the authors in introducing the student to the field practicum experience, the various roles of those involved in their field education, as well as practice application exercises.

This is the best Field practicum text we have used in our social work program and intend to use it in our BSW program. It is thorough and deep in subject matter, it is extremely well written, it covers those topics most important for students in Field practicum, it approaches the materials and concepts from the viewpoint of students, and it utilizes learning tools that interest today's students.

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