Social work: Clinical social work
Profile of the Master's program
Over the last two decades, clinical social work has established itself in German-speaking countries as a health-related specialist social work – the Faculty of Social Work and Health at Coburg University of Applied Sciences has made a significant contribution to this with its social-clinical study programs.
Overall, the development of clinical social work has been and continues to be largely driven by theoretical considerations and empirical research that demonstrate the outstanding influence of (psycho-)social factors on health.
Clinical social workers perform counseling and socio-therapeutic tasks in outpatient, day-care and inpatient settings.
Clinical social work feels particularly committed to supporting marginalized people in complex biopsychosocial stress constellations who are otherwise hardly or only insufficiently reached by healthcare and psychosocial services (clients who are experienced as “hard-to-reach” or are considered “seldom heard”).
Course content and schedule
The course content of this specialization focuses – based on a theoretical foundation – on everyday work with people in their living environment who experience serious conflicts in coping with developmental tasks and often simultaneously struggle with severe chronic illnesses or disabilities (especially mental disorders, drug and alcohol addiction).
Students acquire social-clinical skills in psychosocial diagnostics, counseling, crisis intervention and social therapy.
This enables them to recognize, classify and deal with health-relevant biopsychosocial stress situations.
In addition to ethical reflections and in-depth legal knowledge, students’ ability for differentiated self-reflection in complex practical conditions is further developed.
Clinical evaluation and quality assurance methods enable the planning and implementation of practice-oriented research projects.
Job & Career
Social-clinical tasks arise in a number of “classic” fields of social work, such as child and youth welfare, psychiatry, addiction and integration assistance and care for the elderly.
Specific areas of work include
- Counseling centers (e.g. parenting, partner and family counseling)
- Specialist, acute and rehabilitation hospitals
- General social services, youth welfare offices
- Independent family, child and youth welfare organizations, school social work
- Pre- and core fields of psychiatry (inpatient, day-care and outpatient; therapeutic residential and transitional facilities)
- Resocialization facilities
- Outpatient and inpatient addiction counseling and addiction therapy
- Outpatient and (semi-)inpatient geriatric care and nursing services
- Own practices (e.g. outpatient sociotherapy, counseling)
