The role of a halfway house in social work education.

Abstract

#{149}A social work student who lives in and works as a parttime manager of a psychiatric halfway house has an integrated work and education experience that facilitates the development of social work skills. For the past eight years students at Boston University School of Social Work have participated in such a work and education program as live-in managers at Berkeley House, which accommodates about 23 young adults. Under the current program, a student house manager in the second year of training can arrange to receive academic credit for a portion of his work at Berkeley House. He can earn one half-day per week of fieldwork credit. He spends the remaining two and one half days of fieldwork per week in supervised clinical work at McLean Hospital, a training site for Boston University School of Social Work and the facility that operates Berkeley House. The unique combination of theory and practice increases the student’s sense of professional identity and enhances his feeling of competence in areas such as clinical interviewing, diagnostic assessment, group leadership, community relations, and program administration. The house manager uses the clinical social work methods of casework and group work daily. In addition, he gains valuable experience in collaborating with a variety of agencies and resources in the community. Social casework-focusing on the psychosocial aspects of a person’s life-is a major portion of the house manager’s work. The manager helps the resident to develop new and different ways of relating to his peers, of dealing with conflicts in his job or at school, and of working on problems with his family. Residents in psychiatric halfway house programs of-