A UNBC offering is returning this spring to help stock the toolkits of social workers who work with indigenous young people.
Applications are now being accepted for the rejigged aboriginal child and youth mental health certificate through UNBC's school of social work. The graduate-level program is designed for students who want to practice in the area of aboriginal child and youth mental health, with a focus on working in northern and remote communities.
It's important to have a certificate that focuses specifically on indigenous youth, said social work lecturer Susan Burke.
"I think part of that is because aboriginal children are over-represented in the child welfare system and, really, in most systems where they receive support services," Burke said. "So I think it's really important that people receive general information about these issues, for all children, but then people who are specifically working with aboriginal children I think also need to have additional learning about the particular issues that end up coming into play in their practice."
Among those issues is colonization, said Burke and knowing "how that impacts aboriginal children and families and how that sort of trickles down into the way you need to work with people and how it continues to impact people."
The online program features six courses, one offered per semester over two calendar years, with subjects ranging from aboriginal peoples in Canada to crisis work with children and youth. School of social work program chair Dawn Hemingway said this is, to the best of her knowledge, the only graduate-level and online aboriginal child and youth mental health certificate offered in the province.
"It's not ideal to simply say 'I have courses in child and youth mental health therefore it's generally applicable,'" Hemingway said. "There is specificity to working with indigenous children and youth, so this is attempting to be able to bridge that."
Previously, the school offered the courses as an undergraduate certificate for those with bachelor's degrees, but stopped in the fall of 2011 to start reworking it for a graduate level.
Having the courses online also helps target the audience of those graduate-level students or those looking to refresh their practice who are already practicing social workers, especially those in more remote communities. "It's not always feasible for people to travel to a campus," said Burke.
In addition to those who want to take the full course load to obtain the certificate, the program is also being opened for current graduate students to take individual courses as electives. Anyone with a bachelor of social work or related degree can also contact the school to ask about applying as a non-degree student. The program begins in May.
