SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION CONTINUUM COMMITTEE

EPAS has occupied the thinking of BPD Social Work Education Continuum Committee members for months. Based on findings of the recent Continuum Committee survey of advanced standing MSW students, members of our committee have well documented  data for their conclusion that the BSW/MSW continuum needs attention. This perspective has been shared by Continuum Committee members with CSWE across the multiple drafts of EPAS. At the March 6, 2008 committee meeting at Destin, this perspective was discussed with Darla Spence Coffey, a BPD representative to COCEI. Also discussed with Darla were the Continuum Committee’s concerns about the potential impact on advanced standing of EPAS’s failure to clearly address professional foundation curriculum requirements.

Continuum Committee members Andrea Stewart and Mary Ann Suppes, as members of CSWE’s Council on the Social Work Education Continuum, have also worked with that group to promote EPAS language that would ensure that BSWs would not be required to repeat content mastered in their baccalaureate level professional foundation coursework. There was also an effort to seek acknowledgement in EPAS that persons with the BSW degree had achieved the professional foundation; it would, therefore, not have to be repeated in an MSW program.

The BPD Continuum Committee sponsored a Destin conference presentation that examined the 2005-2006 BPD survey qualitative question responses of advanced standing MSW students related to what they really wanted from advanced standing MSW programs. Implications for design of bridge courses was one of the components of this presentation. 

The BPD Continuum Committee has struggled with the task of writing an article for publication based on the 2005-2006 survey responses.  Committee members committed themselves to writing a preliminary draft by May 1, 2008. 

Mary Ann Suppes, Chair