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This narrative offers a palette of possibilities for linking micro and macro practices that arose from interviews with social workers who were viewed as addressing the profession’s dual purpose of individual well-being and social justice in their practice. I begin with my own experiences and desires to link micro and macro together as a clinical social worker and community organizer. An interlude describing the way the social workers stretched my thinking comes in between the themes. I conclude with a final reflection on the impact of their stories and implications for future research and practice.

Although many White social workers engage in ongoing anti-racist actions, they may still be complicit in perpetuating and reinforcing racism and White Supremacy Culture. Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) social workers, activists, and scholars have described the numerous ways in which the harmful impacts of White Supremacy Culture appear in the well-intentioned efforts of White people who seek to be anti-racist. White social workers are thus responsible for engaging in intentional ongoing practices to identify, interrupt, and shift their interpersonal oppressive uses of power in their practice. The RE/UN/DIScover heuristic is an iterative, embodied set of three practices for working with one’s experiences of shame and internalized dominance, habitual not-seeing, and in-the-moment activations. Literature theorizing White Supremacy ideology and culture frames the description of the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic. This paper describes several heuristic applications, including prompts for engaging in REcover, UNcover and DIScover practices and two composite examples. These applications illustrate how to use the heuristic practices with dual awareness of self and one’s social work practice in the moment and over time. White social workers are encouraged to learn and use the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic practices to guide their efforts to more fully live into their anti-racist commitments in moments of not-seeing and moments of activation.

This article explores the question of how human beings change, how change is constrained, and how change emerges out of and subsequently creates new forms of stability with adults. The emergence of Dynamic Systems Theories (DST) from developmental biology and neuroscience provide the tools to engage in such an understanding by attending to the issues of time, balance, influencing parameters (within person and sociocultural and material environments), and multiple adaptive and maladaptive pathways. DST provides the framework to understand the dynamic processes of bio-psychosocial factors that provide human beings with the stability and the flexibility to navigate the challenges and stressors of living. Complexity, the ability to experience inner continuity as one is changing, is a fluid balance that supports effective functioning. Findings: Key principles and concepts of DST describe multiple pathways of stability and change. A case example illustrates how DST helps social workers understand client experiences and responses to stressors, formulate initial and ongoing assessments, and monitor clients' participation in change activities. Application: Social workers seek to help people who experience an imbalance due to an inability to effectively respond to the negative impact of a stressor. By understanding the various pathways of balance and imbalance along the continuum of continuity to change, social workers can better understand how stressors are impacting specific clients, and subsequently the kinds of change that would best assist each client.

Although research is beginning to capture the complex interactions of biopsychosocial variables operating within experiences of stressors and trauma, the bodies of research have remained largely separate and limited. This study describes a scaffold of factors and pathways based on principles from dynamic systems theories (DST) to organize the literatures on stress and coping and trauma and resilience. As a process model, DST provides the language to understand both impact and response to stressors and trauma: Not as a list of symptoms but as interactive processes within persons and between persons and their surroundings. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

For more than a century the social work profession has had a dual purpose: to promote individual well-being and social justice, but the micro-macro divide is fragmenting the profession. This article suggests that the profession's aim might best be realized by adopting a unifying purpose, a just sense of well-being. Research on complex adaptive systems conceptualizes a unifying purpose as vertical integration carried out in differentiated ways in discrete moments of practice in various settings. Interpersonal neurobiology and Aristotle's interdependence of character virtues and practical judgment inform a corresponding shift from the dualities of personal and professional to the social worker as a person with differentiated professional capacities and activities. Integration with differentiation enhances capacity to promote the profession's purpose.

Constructing mutual, spiritually focused psychotherapy goals is a practice activity fraught with numerous ethical and countertransferential challenges. This article seeks to inform the thinking and enhance the ability of clinical social workers to engage in collaborative and responsive dialogues with their clients regarding the goals of spiritually focused clinical practice by (1) identifying the multiple value frameworks that influence decisions regarding practice goals, (2) articulating some of the ethical complexities and common countertransferential reactions associated with goal setting, and (3) providing self-reflection questions and guides to help therapists navigate the complexities of this material.

As social beings, we experience ourselves through interactions with others in daily routines that participate in the cultural practices and power relations of broader social structures. Social workers, and social scientists in general, however, have had difficulty conceptualizing and synthesizing this way of being in the world. This paper attempts to respond to that gap by discussing how clinical social workers can use the concept of working models as a tool for listening and understanding in psychotherapy. Utilizing a case example, the paper will discuss three working models, the enactment of power relations, cultural practices, and psychological processes, which provide an integrative framework to inform clinical work.

Social workers have always worked with and within uncertainties in practice, but the COVID-19 pandemic is amplifying the frequency and degree of uncertainty across ecological levels. Social workers need enhanced capacity to work with these uncertainties and the impact on individual and collective wellbeing. The RE/UN/DIScover heuristic guides social workers’ responses to the wide range of practice uncertainties experienced in the moment and over time. Drawing on understandings of embodied wellbeing from interpersonal neurobiology and the power relations manifest in intersectional positionality, RE/UN/DIScover offers embodied, iterative practices to access the wealth of capabilities within self and others. IMPLICATIONS Disruptions and uncertainties connected with pandemics, economic recessions, continued systemic injustices and other human-made problems can challenge social workers and impact the wellbeing of individuals and communities. Heuristics are guides that sort, order, and inform decisions and actions. The RE/UN/DIScover heuristic uses knowledge about embodied wellbeing and various forms of power to guide social workers. RE/UN/DIScover offers social workers practices to use with uncertainties both in the moment and over time. © 2020 Australian Association of Social Workers.

From the report: "Project title: Walking the walk or just talking the talk? An exploratory study of the ways social workers understand social work practice." The report describes the research problem, identifies three reserach questions, and discusses the project outcomes and reporting.

Although clinical social work seeks to center the transformative potential of human relationships, practitioners are experiencing heightened systemic and organizational impingements from the dehumanizing pressures of neoliberalism. Neoliberalism and racism diminish the vitality and transformative potential of human relationships, disproportionately affecting Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) communities. Practitioners are also experiencing increased stress and burnout related to increased caseloads and decreased professional autonomy and organizational practitioner support. Holistic, culturally responsive, and anti-oppressive processes seek to counter these oppressive forces but need further development to synthesize antioppressive structural understandings with embodied relational interactions. Practitioners can potentially contribute to efforts that apply critical theories and antioppressive understandings within their practice and workplace. Through an iterative flow of three sets of practices, the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic supports practitioners’ efforts to respond in those challenging everyday moments where oppressive forms of power are imposed and embedded within systemic processes. With themselves and other colleagues, practitioners engage in compassionate REcover practices; use curious, critical reflection to UNcover full understandings of power dynamics, impacts, and meanings; and draw on creative courage to DIScover and enact socially just and humanizing responses. This paper describes how practitioners can use the RE/UN/DIScover heuristic in two common challenging moments of clinical practice: systemic practice impingements and implementing a new training or practice model. The heuristic seeks to support practitioners’ efforts to preserve and expand socially just, relational spaces for themselves and those with whom they work within the context of systemic dehumanizing neoliberal forces.

Discussions pertaining to culture, power and/or identity frequently create tensions that are enacted by dyads and groups within schools, workplaces and communities. Although tensions can easily escalate into conflict or violence, we have observed that these tensions can serve as prompts that promote a change process. When individual perspectives are challenged, some participants are able to dissemble their views and consider other perspectives from which new understandings and views emerge. At times, when groups seem to be on the threshold of overt conflict, some participants engage in processes that examine the tension, explore new possibilities, and alter the view of one's subjectivity. We suggest that these activities occur as momentary states in psychological spaces conceptualized as third spaces (Bhabha, The location of culture. London: Routledge, 1994). In this paper, we use concepts from psychodynamic and social theories to describe the conditions that coalesce to form states of mind (nepantla) (Anzaldua, Borderlands/La Frontera: The new mestiza. San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1999; Interviews Entrevistas. New York: Routledge, 2000) and the ability to engage in new relational possibilities (third space activities) with dyads and groups, outside of psychotherapy. The conditions include: critical consciousness, regulation, recognition, and responsibility. We then describe how such momentary experiences can subsequently result in an examination of one's subjectivity, particularly as it pertains to issues regarding culture, power, and identity. Throughout the paper we provide four examples from various settings to illustrate these concepts and processes. Given the increasing racial/ethnic diversity of clients and clinical social workers in North America, this concept of third spaces holds particular relevance for contemporary clinical social work practice., (C)2008 Kluwer Academic Publishers

Direct practice social workers today are challenged to address the requirements of the complex array of professional, organizational, institutional, and regulatory demands placed on them in the broader socioeconomic context of fewer resources and diminished public support for social welfare services in the United States. The common factors model provides an accessible, transtheoretical, empirically supported conceptual foundation for practice that may help to resolve this conundrum and support effective practice. Common factors are conditions and processes activated and facilitated by strategies and skills that positively influence practice outcomes across a range ofpractice theories. The model provides an expanded conceptualization of the "active ingredients" required for change to include a focus on conditions and processes as well as practice strategies and to focus on all who are involved in the work. The model is described and implications for practice are discussed.

Foundation social work practice education is critical to the preparation of BSW practitioners for professional practice and the establishment of a theoretical and skill base upon which graduate students may build competencies in the advanced curriculum. Issues in the foundation practice curriculum may hinder this development. The common factors model holds promise as an organizing framework for foundation social work practice education. This model may help to resolve some key issues in social work and social work education, and may provide a useful, coherent, and empirical base for the foundation practice curriculum. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Most undergraduate students pursue a social work major because of their desire to help others. Students tend to be more interested in doing than in understanding the research and knowledge of the profession and the complexities of social work practice. Instructors are often faced with the challenge of enhancing student motivation to learn challenging course material. This study explored student perceptions of instructor influences on their motivation and engagement in learning. Through online surveys, students described their experiences of being known and how those experiences affected their participation in practice, research, and human behavior in the social environment courses. Results showed that instructor caring (providing recognition, expressing relational qualities, and responding to students) positively influences student motivation and affective learning by increasing comfort, willingness to ask questions, take risks, and overall participation. Conversely, of those who reported mixed experiences or who felt unknown, most reported a negative impact on their motivation and participation. These findings suggest that social work faculty can influence student motivation and engagement with essential social work curriculum by expressing care and helping students feel known in the classroom. © 2013 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

This chapter describes a two-step process including videotaping and process-recording activities to facilitate self-awareness and the expression of empathy and acceptance toward other points of view. These activities are designed for beginning student clinicians who are currently completing their coursework and their first clinical internship. The first step of videotaping helps clinicians become more aware of their inner thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and personal values. This first step also helps participating clinicians become more aware of their nonverbal communication with clients, helping them assess how their internal experiences of empathy and acceptance match what is being conveyed nonverbally to their clients. The second step of the activity, process recording, helps clinicians reflect on their ability to use self-awareness to analyze their inner experiences and their outer expressions of empathy and acceptance (both verbal and nonverbal) while still being attuned to their clients' communication.

In this final article of the special issue Beyond the Manual: Using Data and Judgment in Clinical Social Work Practice, we extend the discussion regarding the use of data and judgment. We discuss the multiple sources of data used in practice, including research evidence, client perspectives and experience, moment-by-moment process observation, and client feedback regarding progress towards specific, desired outcomes. We move beyond current debates purporting one framework over another to propose a synthesizing framework that situates evidence-based practice, empirically supported interventions and common elements/mapping and adapting practice within a common factors scaffolding framework. This framework provides a way for social workers to effectively make sound judgments using research and client data within the demands of contemporary practice. The article provides a brief overview of the four practice approaches followed by the proposed scaffolding framework and rationale, and concludes with implications for practice, professional education, and research.

There is a growing divide in social work between those that believe social work interventions should be based on either art or science. We argue that these positions create a false dichotomy within the profession, possibly due to the language associated with clinical work and research. In this introduction article of the Special Issue: Beyond the Manual, we outline the debate within social work around the art and science split and then offer a new approach to framing the issue. We argue that social workers are regularly approaching their work with clients using art and science simultaneously and describe a new frame for the profession. In an effort to articulate and promote this new frame, this special issue was born. This introductory article concludes with a brief description of the topics and articles included in the issue to orient the reader to the content included within it.