Competencies Overview

CSWE Educational Policy Standards require outcome data on students’ practice readiness. Accordingly, many social work educators seek to identify essential or core competencies of knowledge and skills. To enable measurement of these outcomes, a competency-based approach has been chosen to guide the gerontological knowledge, values, and skills outcomes of students completing foundation courses. Nevertheless, professional social work practice requires the capacity to use skills differentially. Therefore, our competency-based approach recognizes that the overarching framework for the development and measurement of competencies is professional judgment, values, and critical thinking.

Competency Documents

Foundation Gerontological Social Work Competencies
Use to guide curriculum infusion/transformation in foundation BSW and MSW coursework (e.g., learning outcomes expected from the foundation year).

Competency Self-Rating Scale
A measurement of practice skills as assessed by both the student and his/her supervisor. Within the context of a continuum of learning, the level of anticipated skill on each scale would be different from first year MSW or BSW level, second year MSW and post-MSW education.

Selecting Competencies for Gerontological Practice
Suggests steps to guide faculty in the process of selecting and measuring gero-infused competencies.

Geriatric Social Work Competencies Bibliography
A bibliography from the Practicum Partnership Program about the development of gero competencies.

*Some programs may need to modify the competencies slightly to be congruent with their mission and curricular goals/objectives.

Competency History

CSWE SAGE-SW National Competencies Survey and Report
The former SAGE-SW project conducted an extensive survery of social workers to answer: What competencies are needed by ALL social workers? What competencies do specialists in aging need?

Development of Gerontological Social Work Competencies
This background statement provides context and history for how the competencies were created.

Video: Geriatric Social Work Competencies in Aging Infused Curricula
JoAnn Damron-Rodriguez presents on the background and importance of competencies.