Rationale for Utilizing Standardized Clients in the Training and Evaluation of Social Work Students

ABSTRACT

The gap between classroom preparation and field performance continues to be a major problem to social work educators. “Standardized Clients” (SCs) have been accepted by medical educators since the 1970s but have not been systematically integrated into social work education. This paper advocates the feasibility and effectiveness of using SCs, in both the education and evaluation of social work students, and in a wide variety of applications, thereby significantly strengthening competency-based, direct practice training in Schools of Social Work. SCs are nonprofessionals trained to simulate a wide range of physical signs, emotions and affect, symptoms and behaviors, and able to recall a breadth of scripted medical, psychiatric, and social information with a high degree of realism. They can provide behavior-based evidence, free of the potential for risk to “real” clients, that skills have been mastered. We are proposing that this method of instruction and evaluation is eminently suited to the goals and objectives of social work education as a means of providing students with opportunities to practice their interviewing and assessment skills prior to contact with clients in the field.