SCWK8857 · Social Work

Group Therapy for Children and Adolescents

School of Social Work

Elective This course will prepare students to design and facilitate experiential skills-based groups with both children and adolescents. Building on first-year foundational content this course prepares students to learn how to facilitate skills-based group therapy with youth. Several guiding theories, including (Cognitive Behavior Therapy, Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Solution Focused Therapy, Narrative Therapy, and Motivational Interviewing), will be integrated with multiple experiential activities as vehicles for the engagement in the interventions. Each guiding theory dominates a minimum of two weeks in the syllabus to ensure depth of learning and exploration of possibilities for theory into practice. The experiential activities will include music, adventure, bibliotherapy, art therapy, and technology to assist in the engagement of clients in the learning process and will be utilized throughout the course. Assignments challenge students to develop two innovative original experiential group sessions and demonstrate competence in facilitating both of their group sessions.