By LCU News
PINEVILLE, La. (LCU News) – Louisiana Christian University’s social work department hosted its first Continuing Education Series, Jan. 31, with more than 100 social work alumni, field supervisors and community social workers in attendance.
Graves stressed how important it was for LCU to make the series affordable and accessible to all levels of social workers, including current graduate students who attended for free.
CEUs are required for all licensed social workers. Ten in-person CEUs are required annually and can be difficult to find in the community, said Vanessa Graves, LCSW-BACS, MSW field director and associate professor.
“We wanted to say thank you to all of the social workers in the local and surrounding areas of the state who have supported our BSW and MSW programs whether as former students and now alumni, serving as field supervisors, and/or networking with us as fellow social work professionals,” Graves said.
Anxiety disorders and self-care was the topic of the afternoon session.
“These [anxiety] disorders are rapidly increasing and currently the most diagnosed mental disorder in the United States,” Graves said. It is important as social workers who serve and treat individuals with these disorders to stay updated with the current diagnostic criteria, societal factors and treatment interventions.”
Self-care is also an important function for both social workers and those they serve, said Sheri Duffy, DSW, LCSW, professor of social work and MSW program director.
“The objectives for the self-care portion of the presentation were for participants to recognize the personal and professional impact of anxiety and stress, and identify specific self-care tools,” Duffy said. “Participants were able to interact with each other sharing different ways to teach/model self-care for clients who are struggling with anxiety, but they were also encouraged as professionals to identify their own self-care strategies.”
“Ethics for Everyday Practice” was the morning session, presented by Bobbye Roberts, LCSW-BACS, associate professor and BSW program director, and Maggie Bridges, LCSW-BACS, associate professor of social work and BSW field education director.
“Due to the explosion of technology and use of telehealth in our field, navigating ethical issues has become much more complex with the potential for boundary confusion with our clients, as well as unintentional ethical violations,” Roberts said. “We pointed out that just because you are a savvy social media user in your personal life, that does not make you digitally literate in a professional sense. Our goal was to challenge our audience to think through some of these tough questions, collaborate with colleagues, and use a sound decision-making process to navigate these types of ethical issues and dilemmas.”
Bridges said they covered changes and updates to our social work Code of Ethics, which is important because ethics is one of those mandated areas of continuing education that social workers must continue to get for our license, and some clinicians may be unaware of them and how that impacts their practices in the field.
