Theories
This theory looks at how a person’s thoughts, feelings, and behaviors influence one another.
What is Cognitive Behavioral Theory (CBT)?
A social worker's close friend asks them to provide therapy to their teenage child because the friend “trusts you more than anyone else.”
What is a potential conflict of interest and boundary issue?
True or False:
Self-care is only necessary when a social worker is feeling stressed or burned out.
False! Self-care is an ongoing practice that helps social workers maintain their well-being before they reach burnout.
This manual is widely used by mental health professionals in the United States to classify and diagnose mental disorders.
What is the DSM-5-TR?
The process of gathering information about a client's strengths, needs, challenges, resources, and circumstances to understand their situation.
What is assessment?
This theory emphasizes that people develop within multiple interconnected systems, including family, school, community, and society.
What is Ecological Systems Theory?
A social worker realizes that their personal beliefs about parenting are influencing how they respond to a client's parenting decisions. What should the social worker do?
A. Tell the client what they believe the client should do
B. End services immediately
C. Recognize their personal bias and seek supervision or consultation as appropriate
D. Ignore the feelings and continue practicing exactly as before
C. Recognize their personal bias and seek supervision or consultation as appropriate
A social worker realizes they have been feeling unusually stressed and irritable for several weeks. Instead of ignoring it, they pause to identify what they are feeling and what they need. What self-care skill is this?
What is self-awareness?
A therapist uses open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summaries to help a client explore their own reasons for change. What approach is being used?
What is Motivational Interviewing?
A social worker helps a client connect with housing, food assistance, transportation, and healthcare resources. What type of practice is this?
What is case management?
This theory focuses on how people learn behaviors by observing and imitating others.
What is Social Learning Theory?
A social worker is treating a client who has decision-making capacity. The client makes a choice that the social worker strongly believes is harmful. The client understands the potential consequences and does not want the social worker to intervene. What is the most appropriate ethical consideration?
A. The social worker should override the client's decision because the social worker believes it is harmful.
B. The social worker should terminate services because the client's values conflict with their own.
C. The social worker should respect the client's self-determination while exploring the decision, providing relevant information, addressing safety concerns, and managing their own values and biases.
D. The social worker should ask the client's family to intervene without informing the client.
C. Respect the client's self-determination while exploring the decision, providing relevant information, addressing safety concerns, and managing personal values and biases.
A social worker consistently accepts additional clients because they feel guilty saying no, even though their workload is already overwhelming. What professional self-care skill needs attention?
What are boundaries?
This therapy combines cognitive-behavioral strategies with acceptance and mindfulness skills and is commonly used for clients experiencing significant emotion dysregulation.
What is Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)?
A social worker works directly with an individual client to address their needs and goals. This level of practice is called what?
What is micro practice?
Rather than asking only, “What's wrong with this client?” the social worker asks, “What strengths, resources, relationships, and abilities can help this person move forward?”
What is the Strengths Perspective?
Social workers have an ethical responsibility to recognize the limits of their knowledge and skills and practice within their areas of __________.
competence
A social worker notices that they have become emotionally numb toward clients, dread coming to work, and increasingly view clients as “problems” rather than people. They are also physically exhausted. What combination of professional concerns should the social worker consider?
What are burnout and compassion fatigue?
A family seeks therapy because their teenager's behavior has changed significantly. Instead of working only with the teenager, the therapist examines communication patterns, family roles, relationships, and how each person's behavior affects the larger family system.
What is Family Systems Therapy?
A social worker facilitates a support group for parents experiencing similar challenges. This is an example of which level of practice?
What is mezzo practice?
This legal scholar coined the term intersectionality in 1989 to describe how overlapping identities and systems of oppression can shape a person's experience.
Who is Kimberlé Crenshaw?
The NASW Code of Ethics was first adopted in ________.
1996
A social worker notices that hearing clients' traumatic experiences is beginning to affect their own emotions, worldview, and sense of safety. Unlike general workplace exhaustion, this response is specifically associated with repeated exposure to others' trauma. What is it called?
What is secondary traumatic stress?
A therapist helps a client recognize painful thoughts without automatically believing or trying to eliminate them, while encouraging the client to take actions that align with their personal values. This therapeutic approach is called __________.
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT)
A social worker works with community organizations to advocate for changes to a policy affecting access to affordable housing. This represents which level of social work practice?
What is macro practice?