SOCW627 Culturally Informed Behavioral HlthPrac with People with Disabilities
This course explores considerations for providing culturally informed behavioral health care to disability communities. Discussions will include the limitations of the medical and pathology-based models in theories and clinical interventions discussed in prior courses. Students will learn engagement, assessment, intervention, and evaluation methods that are culturally sensitive and consider the impact of lack of access, discrimination, ableism, and present-day social and political events which affect behavioral health and service needs. Students will also gain an understanding of the social worker’s clinical and advocacy roles considering the systemic barriers faced by this community and the client’s individual characteristics and preferences, spirituality, and cultural, family and community values and practices. Attention is given to the impacts of structural conditions, including exclusion from the labor market, life on disability benefits, lack of access to many public services, homelessness, institutionalization, and incarceration. Attention is also given to the diverse types of disability communities and movements, including neurodivergent and mad-identified communities, which provide alternative frameworks for clinical care.