Financial Social Work Certificate Program: Teaching Social Workers about Financial Empowerment for Their Clients and Communities

Background and Purpose:  The Financial Social Work (FSW) Certificate Program at a large mid-Atlantic university launched the first in-person program of its kind in 2018 to meet identified social work needs for greater financial capability and empowerment knowledge in diverse settings (non-profit and other social service agencies, schools, medical settings, and justice/court settings). Social workers and human service organizations have expressed significant needs for FSW training and skill-building strategies to enable them to intervene effectively with financially distressed individuals, families, and communities. Beyond providing resources, social workers must have sophisticated knowledge about issues in daily financial life, such as credit, debt, budgeting, and financial goal-setting. Social workers must understand complex financial struggles and how these intersect with other psychosocial stressors, in addition to being confident to address them directly. From a macro perspective, social workers must understand and address historic and current policy issues that influence and affect people’s paths towards greater financial stability, including policies that hinder financial stability and/or that perpetuate economic injustice.

The primary goals of the seven full-day Program are to build social workers' knowledge of and skills with FSW concepts and practice, given today's increasingly complex "financialization." The researchers hypothesized that financial knowledge of and familiarity with FSW practice concepts would improve after completion.

 

Methods:  Researchers used a mixed methods design with one-group pre-, post-, and follow-up surveys to gauge knowledge learned. Focus groups were also held to gather participants’ feedback about the usefulness and application of the program. All 31 social workers from the first cohort participated, and they varied in employment, age, gender, and race/ethnicity. Questions assessed financial knowledge and self-efficacy to practice FSW skills across topics. Descriptive and bivariate analyses were used to report responses, and an assortment of appropriate tests were used to assess changes over time. Focus group data were evaluated using a thematic analysis.

 

Results:  Social workers responded affirmatively that their knowledge about how they can better serve clients’ financial needs had improved, along with their comfort levels in incorporating financial issues into their practice and their knowledge of pertinent ethical issues. On multiple questions measuring financial knowledge related to savings, credit scores, mortgages, interest, and investments, Program attendees exhibited significant increases, which will be explicated in detail. But there were some questions in which increases were not observed, e.g., credit reports, and it was theorized by the researchers that reinforcement of important concepts in the material must be emphasized throughout the Program’s duration. Overall, participants responded that the Program had taught them valuable concepts regarding financially focused therapy and macro considerations, among others, that they could apply to their practice settings. Additionally, they valued the growing professional network of which they were now a part and could utilize for questions, resource-sharing, and communication.

Conclusions and Implications:  This research suggests that the FSW Certificate Program is providing valuable training for social workers to use towards greater financial empowerment within their clients and communities. Researchers are discussing plans to disseminate the Program with future models using online and hybrid learning.