Graduate First-Year Foundation
Field Goals and Objectives

The student will be expected to:

GOAL 1: Pursue professional self-development with a commitment to social justice and professional values and ethics.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Use the field experience to integrate knowledge gained in social work courses and other academic areas to enhance understanding of people in the context of their rural environment.
2. Articulate a personal value system while communicating and practicing in accordance with social work values, including respect for dignity, individuality, and self-determination.
3. Identify with the helping process and the role of social work in the agency.
4. Understand and use professional guidelines for confidentiality.
5. Communicate in a clear, concise, complete, and effective manner, with appropriate tone and affect, in verbal communications and in accordance with the agency's written record-keeping format.

Spring Quarter:

1. Competently represent the profession and the agency in public interactions.
2. Establish an effective work plan and use time efficiently.
3. Use critical thinking to begin to identify value conflicts and ethical issues.
4. Begin identifying social issues impacting client situations.

Goal 2: Illustrate "use of self" in relationship to client systems, the field instructor, and agency personnel with particular appreciation for cultural and social diversity in rural environments.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Concentrate on developing and using interactive skills for effective social work practice in a rural environment.
2. Use supervision to focus on identified learning needs, to utilize feedback, and to generalize from one learning experience to another, with appropriate requests for guidance and assistance.
3. Develop and demonstrate sensitivity to potentially vulnerable and/or oppressed client groups.

Spring Quarter:

1. Maintain a constructive relationship with and create a safe atmosphere for clients.
2. Continue to develop awareness of personal responses to clients and situations.
3. Coordinate with other staff and agencies, both verbally and in writing.

GOAL 3: Promote integration of the agency and the community human service delivery system as resources in performing social work roles.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Familiarize self with and apply agency policies and procedures.
2. Understand and articulate the services offered and the populations served by the agency.
3. Explore the agencies within the rural community.

Spring Quarter:

1. Anticipate the needs and resources of clients and the community.
2. Integrate social welfare policies and programs with the particular field practice setting and rural community.

GOAL 4: Formulate and utilize the professional relationship in engaging and working with the client system to identify strengths and goals.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Utilize interviewing and other data collection skills in working with clients.
2. Routinely involve clients in identifying strengths and resources, with sensitivity to special needs and circumstances.

Spring Quarter:

1. Demonstrate the ability to successfully engage the client in interactions in order to obtain necessary information. Modify interviewing style based on client responses.
2. Begin to develop case plans by helping the client to identify immediate and long-term goals.

GOAL 5: Develop interventions which are culturally and age appropriate and which are sensitive to potentially vulnerable and/or oppressed groups, while working with individuals, families, small groups, organizations, and communities in rural environments.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Structure an interview while keeping the focus on the client and appropriate goals
2. Help clients to identify their strengths, to engage in problem solving, and to function as independently as possible.
3. Identify and work within developmental stages across the life span in the context of the rural environment.

Spring Quarter:

1. Demonstrate an awareness of several modes of intervention with beginning evidence of integrating theory with practice.
2. Select appropriate intervention techniques based on client needs and personal skills.
3. Work to expand level of skill and technique.

GOAL 6: Demonstrate the importance of and the implications of transitions as they relate to diverse populations in multiple practice settings, particularly those in rural environments.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Expand awareness of the ever-present influence of changes, endings, and loss in life.
2. Demonstrate the ability to use agency and community resources as a way to address issues of change and transition.

Spring Quarter:

1. Realize the implications of change and loss for both the client and self and address them in the intervention plan.
2. Seek appropriate resources at the time of termination.

GOAL 7: Support evaluation and develop research skills and methods as necessary components of social work practice.

Outcome Objectives
Winter Quarter:

1. Accept the importance of self-evaluation in practice with the ability to accept and respond to feedback.
2. Understand and facilitate agency accountability procedures.

Spring Quarter:

1. Understand and use research data to inform practice.
2. Request feedback and utilize self-reflective practice.