NASW and ASWB have recently adopted joint standards for using technology in practice.  This is challenging because of the wide-ranging diversity among clients.  Some can be easily cyber-stalked.  Others experience insurmountable digital divides. Many agencies remain unconnected.  Just what needs to be covered in the classroom?  Come find out!

Description:

The National Association of Social Workers and Association of Social Work Boards have produced a joint set of standards for regulating the use of technology in social work practice.  This was the first time that these two organizations have ever collaborated to address a standards issue.  Basically, the new standards address ethics and values, consumer and worker access, cultural competencies with vulnerable populations, technical abilities on the part of the worker, regulatory and risk management issues, identity verification, the potentials for theft, privacy and confidentiality problems, and practice issues for clinicians, administrators, community workers, researchers, and supervisors. 

 Technology has often been an “add on” dimension in the classroom for many programs.  The new standards provide a clear mandate: Technology is no longer peripheral and must be an integral facet of social work education.  Given the proliferation of electronic communications, case management systems, community networks, and geographic information systems, we need to include it as we prepare our students for contemporary practice.

 The authors will provide an overview of the new standards and discuss the implications of what should be considered for inclusion in the social work curriculum.  This is clearly a diversity, social, and economic justice issue: Over half of the households in the country have Internet service and roughly three quarters of the American public uses email.   Yet others – the digitally abandoned – do not have access.  Licensure issues are especially problematic when the worker practices in one state, the client lives in another, and collateral kin reside in yet a third. Instantly available records can enhance or oppress the people we seek to help.