E-books

ABCSW members and certificants get access to great clinical and legal source materials in the form of e-books. Just contact the ABCSW at [email protected] to request your e-book(s).

Clinical Social Work Practice with Children and Families - Millions of helpless children are being abused and neglected at any moment in the United States. As the nation’s largest provider of behavioral health services, clinical social workers must be able to conduct effective interventions with these children and their families and caregivers. The characteristics of competent practice are the focus of this publication, which examines the levels and types of knowledge, training, skill and experience, as well as proficiency in utilizing relevant theory and proven techniques, by which practitioners should address the bio-psycho-social problems and disorders unique to children and their families.

Competency in Clinical Social Work - Clinical social work, with more than 200,000 clinical-level licensees, is the major provider of behavioral healthcare in the United States. This publication is intended to be comprehensive and definitive in describing the knowledge, skills and behaviors that constitute the competent practice of clinical social work. Competency is identified across the various phases by which a practitioner develops, and in specific terms of practice components and indicators of proficiency in clinical social work.

Confidentiality in Clinical Social Work - Late in 1995, the U.S. Supreme Court heard the case of Jaffee vs. Redmond over the issue of psychotherapy-patient confidentiality and specifically whether a clinical social worker and her client had the right to withhold case notes in a federal court proceeding. In early 1996, the Supreme Court ruled that, in all federal courts, the principle of privacy and confidentiality of therapeutic disclosures trumped the evidentiary value of such notes (with very limited exceptions). The present publication is intended to provide teachers, students and other readers with an introduction to the case and its issues, including salient materials from Jaffee vs. Redmond, as a means of examining the issue of confidentiality and its clinical and legal importance.

Rights and Responsibilities in Behavioral Healthcare - This publication describes the elements of effective behavioral healthcare and the rights and responsibilities of the participants involved in its delivery: the client as consumer, the practitioner and the third-party entity. After a thorough review of three-party interactions, the ABCSW concludes that “client need” should be the driving force in the provision of services. To that end, the ethical means for delivering competent behavioral healthcare are herein identified and discussed.

Supervision in Clinical Social Work - As the bridge connecting new practitioners to the mastery of competent practice, clinical supervision is essential to continuity within clinical social work and to the overall health of the profession. This publication is intended to be definitive in describing clinical supervision in clinical social work - its purposes, nature, domains and approaches - and the characteristics of practice by which a clinical supervisor may be recognized and rewarded.