Applied Podcast

• Empowering the Future of Social Work
• Social Work Research Center celebrates 20 years of improving the lives of Coloradans
• First-generation student experience – Anahi Orozco, School of Social Work

• Master of Social Work
• Conflict Resolution and Mediation Graduate Certificate
• PreK-12 School Social Worker Graduate Certificate

Beren Goguen (00:00):
Welcome back to Applied. My name is Beren Goguen. I’m here today with Mindy Van Kalsbeek, who teaches graduate courses in social work and serves as associate director of CSU’s Hybrid Master of Social Work Program. Mindy received the College of Health and Human Sciences Outstanding Teacher Award in 2023. Prior to teaching, Mindy spent several years working with adults with developmental disabilities and mental health challenges. Mindy, thanks so much for being here.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (00:25):
Yeah, thanks for having me.

Beren Goguen (00:27):
How long have you been working in the social work field?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (00:30):
So I’ve been working in the social work field for a little over two decades. Most of my career has been in two different domains. The first part of my career was working at a nonprofit organization, working with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities and mental illnesses. And then the second half of my career has been working at CSU working in education. Throughout those different positions, I’ve been involved in a number of different roles, a number of different social work roles, and also have engaged in a lot of the different social work skills. So it’s been a fun mix of getting to work in a specialty area, getting to know a certain field within our state and within working with individuals, and then also transferring some of those skills to my work at CSU.

Beren Goguen (01:14):
So I imagine having that field experience helps a lot when you come into university, teach others.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (01:19):
Yeah, you’re exactly correct. I think a lot of what I learned early on in my career has probably contributed to my reason for being interested in education in terms of just wanting to be part of those ongoing feedback loops of learning. Certainly a lot of what I learned was things that I observed in different positions when I was involved in educational opportunities, and then a lot of the different roles that I was engaged in and the different social worker skill sets that are utilized are ones that I continue to use that are just an extension of the previous work I was doing, and those have carried through to my work at CSU.

Beren Goguen (01:57):
So the skills that you gained working as a social worker are also applied to teaching?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (02:01):
Absolutely. Great question. There’s a number of different things that I think I’ve learned. I think a few of the social work skills that are pertinent to quite possibly a lot of areas of life are just different types of communication skills. Active listening is one that I think that’s something that I got a lot of feedback from in my previous job in terms of with the domain that I was working in and the individuals I was working with. There would be times where different type of active listening skills would be necessary in order to engage in a way that was thoughtful, that was person-centered in a way that invited dialogue and also demonstrated empathy. So that’s one skill. Empathy is another one that I think I learned a lot about, and that’s one that I continue to learn in different capacities. I think empathy is something that takes on a lot of different shapes and can look different in different contexts and is one that really takes some purposeful reflection on how to truly empathize with someone in their situations.

Beren Goguen (03:07):
I sometimes wonder if empathy is a learned skill or something that is more inherent as part of personality. I imagine it’s kind of a combination of both.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (03:15):
Yeah, great question. I would say it is a combination of both. I do think that it is a skill that with attentiveness and with mindfulness and focus can be something that is fostered in different environments. When I think of my own life and think about different ways that I’ve engaged with people over the years, I can note times when I was aware of being hurried or not being fully present or being distracted by something going on, and as a result of that, that interfered with my ability to remain engaged and therefore to remain empathetic. So I think there are specific contextual factors that can impact how we empathize. And then I think our own life circumstances also play a role in our experience of empathy.

Beren Goguen (04:03):
So empathy also includes some self-awareness to know that I’m not really in the right space to give the amount of empathy that I should right now.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (04:12):
Yeah, I think there’s a close connection between presence and how empathy is displayed. So I think there have been times where, like I said, where the empathy that I had based on my understanding of the situation and based on my personality, so integrating some of those things and based on the skillset that I know within the social work profession, those can either be inhibited by contextual factors or the environment being distracted, or if I’m really focusing on being present with someone and to their experiences, that creates a different context for how I can show up for them and how I can truly empathize not just in how I’m feeling, but also in what I reflect back to them and what I say and how I’m listening to them.

Beren Goguen (04:57):
Empathy can be taxing or hard, especially when it’s part of your job. It’s something you kind of have to be aware of and have to be committed to

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (05:07):
Mhmm

Beren Goguen (05:07):
On a day-to-day basis. So I imagine that could come into play when you talk about burnout or just a job that’s a little more stressful emotionally. Is that fair to say?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (05:19):
Yeah, I do think that’s fair to say. I think within not just social work, but I think within some of the human services and humanistic professions, there can be burnout that is affiliated with different levels of compassion fatigue or different levels of just being aware of the impact of the empathy and working with people and holding and partnering with them in the different areas of their life that are troublesome for them. And in no way is that the same as being the person in the circumstance in the difficult circumstance, whether it’s an individual having a relational complication or something that relates to oppression and systemic racism. So being the social worker connected to that is not the same as being the person experiencing that firsthand. And it’s also important to be mindful of what type of self-care practices, social workers engage in the ways that we are being aware of how our jobs can impact us. And similarly to what I said before, I don’t think that’s unique to social work. It’s all the different ways that we can engage in our professions, thoughtfully, and with awareness of the impacts that come with whatever profession we’ve chosen.

Beren Goguen (06:34):
What do you enjoy most about the social work field?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (06:37):
One big reason for selecting social work was, well, one, that’s what my older sister chose. So following in her footsteps as I tended to do with a lot of my early adolescence. So when I saw her doing that, I thought, oh, that seems like a good idea. I should look into that a little further. I had a few of my own personal experiences that also made me curious about the field. And when I rolled those all together, my understanding was that being in the social work profession involved working with people at an intersection of human behavior and the impacts of the society and environmental considerations, and that’s something that always seemed fascinating to me in terms of understanding the full scope of someone’s experience. I know for myself, if I look at my own life, I can identify parts of my personality, parts of who I am intrinsically that contribute to who I am, and then I can also see different environmental considerations that are inextricably linked to how I behaved in certain contexts, choices that I made, ways I engage with relationships. So that’s something that I think is a really, it’s a great intersection of where we can work with individuals and recognizing both of those, all of who someone is in their personality, all of that. And then also the impacts from the environment. So that’s

Beren Goguen (08:00):
What are some examples of environmental impact?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (08:03):
Yeah, so one example that comes to mind for me in thinking about my area of work prior to CSU and working with adults with developmental disabilities, one big area where this can be seen is in looking at our environment and looking at our physical establishments and looking at different systems that we engage with and how those do have a fully inclusive design and a universal design that say someone who mobilizes with a wheelchair, would they be able to access a facility in the same way that somebody who walks.

Beren Goguen (08:39):
So accessibility is one.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (08:40):
Yeah, accessibility is one.

Beren Goguen (08:43):
Home life for people can be a factor, and the experience of how your home experience growing up is a big one.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (08:51):
Yeah, absolutely. And part of within social work education, a lot of what we are learning and considering is how all of those different factors influence someone. So different dimensions that we might consider in terms of how those impact someone who they are, how they show up could be their family, it could be the different type of macro environment that they grew up in. Is it a rural area? Is it an urban area? Could be the political context and impacts from the political environment that they grew up in. So lots of those types of dimensions, those all come together from a perspective where they’re all related in some capacity and one might impact another one. And all of those come together to impact human behavior and choices.

Beren Goguen (09:40):
When you are helping someone who has struggled with their environment and has had an impact on them possibly even for years during their development, what are some ways of addressing that?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (09:50):
Yeah, do you mean specific to some sort of physical environment or

Beren Goguen (09:55):
I guess a good example would be if someone is dealing with a developmental disability and they have not had access to the type of supports that they should other than connecting them with supports now, what are some ways that a social worker might address that experience I guess?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (10:13):
Speaking more broadly, I think perhaps what you’re touching on is some different ways that we can engage in social work practice specific to that field. So a lot of different focal systems that could be considered. One would be working specifically with the individual to make modifications to their current arrangements in order to better support their needs, better support their quality of life. If we zoom out a little bit, there’s a lot of other contexts that can be considered, which would be looking at what type of changes or actions can be done within policies to better promote accessibility, to promote quality of life in a way that is fully inclusive, fully accessible.

Beren Goguen (10:57):
So do social workers get involved with policy making then?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (10:59):
Yeah, absolutely. One of the areas within speaking again to working with adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, that’s one of the ways that I was involved in social work during my previous job, and that’s also a way that’s really important in looking at the macro level context. And not only what are we doing in this moment right now for this person, but if we zoom out a little bit, what are we doing when we’re considering our citywide context, our countywide context, our statewide context? Are there different policies that can be changed that we can advocate for to increase the type of service provision that’s provided within the state of Colorado? Under one of the waiver systems, a Medicaid waiver, there are a substantial amount of adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities who are on a wait list for service, and that wait list has been in place for several years. So that’s one area that a lot of the different organizations within the state have collaborated on to figure out how do we increase resources in order to diminish the wait list so that every person who needs services is receiving some sort of support and some sort of services for their quality of life.

Beren Goguen (12:14):
So is that more of a policy issue or a lack of resources? Most likely financial resources.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (12:21):
Different states have different models for how services are delivered. In Colorado, we have waiver services and non waiver services, and a lack of funding is certainly the number of people who need services of some sorts and the amount of funding that is allocated to that, there’s a pretty big gap in that. So more funding would certainly help. There’s also been some efforts in the last decade to shift the type of service models and the type of service provisions that are available to better meet the needs of individuals and better support families to be able to be involved in their family member’s life in a way that they can be compensated for that and they can be involved with their family members still living with them or them providing services in a way that is financially sustainable.

Beren Goguen (13:12):
What’s an example of what that looks like? I’m not familiar with waivers.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (13:16):
A summary of the waivers. There’s different types of waivers that are available depending on someone having a resource. So someone has to have gone through the statewide process in order to get a resource to receive services if they have an intellectual or developmental disability. Waivers can be a comprehensive waiver where the funding supports all of their needs, all of their residential needs supports any home care that they have, daily activities.

(13:44):
There’s also a supported living services waiver, which is for individuals who live independently in the community and need certain types of supports, maybe just support with seeking medical care or support with shopping or support with certain types of communication and coping skills. Under those different waivers, there’s different ways that the support can be provided. So one way in Colorado that has been very supportive, a very positive change for families is something called the Family Caregiver Act, which has been in place for a little over a decade, I believe, and that’s a model where an individual who is receiving full supports for their living can remain living with a family member as an adult, and the family member can be involved in a way that they get compensated for the care that they’re providing to their brother or sister or child. That’s a big change from some previous models where when someone aged out of the system, when they became an adult, that they had to go live somewhere else if they wanted to receive those waiver services. This is a way where parents can still be involved, sisters brothers can be involved with their family member and receive that financial support.

Beren Goguen (15:04):
So if someone listening has a family member who needs more support when they’re not really sure where to go for that information, what would you recommend?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (15:12):
A couple different options. Within Colorado, our service provision model falls under the categorization of each county has a community center board. Some community center boards are involved in multiple counties, but if someone is in Denver County, for example, the community center board for that county is Rocky Mountain Human Services. Each county has that designated, it’s called CCB for short, and that CCB is the first point of contact where a family member or someone could call learn more about what type of services are available. If I am interested in services, if I need services or someone in my life does, here are the different pathways that can be considered for waiver services or non waiver services. From there, there are additional organizations which are called program approved service agencies, pasas for short, and the community agencies and the service agencies work together to provide options for individuals and families on which type of service is going to best support your needs. So that’s a great place to start. There are, like I said, there can be some barriers and some challenges in navigating the system as it’s complex. There’s a lot of different layers to be considered. But that’s a really good place to start just with some general questions and to learn more about resources.

Beren Goguen (16:43):
So I asked what you enjoy most about social work. What do you feel is the most challenging part of that field?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (16:50):
That’s changed for me a lot over the years. I think at the start of my social work career, one of the areas that felt most challenging was where to channel my efforts when looking at all of the social work has a wide array of ways that you can be involved, different opportunities for working with individuals, working with families, working with groups and communities. And then within that there’s also subsets of do I want to work with a certain type of experience that someone is having? So there’s a lot to consider, and when I considered that in terms of who I am and how I want to show up for my job, it felt overwhelming and trying to decide what area do I want to pursue, recognizing that all human needs are important. So that’s something that I think can be challenging within that, considering my use of self, the combination of who I am, what my skill sets are.

(17:53):
Also combined with my social work knowledge, what I’ve learned, I think I had a lot of fear and worry about how do I show up in a way that I am where my impact is aligning with my intentions and had a lot of fear about what if I have these great intentions and I truly do want to partner with people in their experiences, be a resource to them, and what if that’s not how it feels for them? What if my impact is different? So that was really challenging in figuring out how do I engage with that in a way that I’m authentically me and also have a level of accountability and responsibility for how I’m showing up, while also having compassion for myself that if there’s a situation that I engage in and that when I reflect on it, I think, oh, I didn’t see this option at the time, that could have been a different way to engage with it.

(18:49):
How do I hold both the accountability and responsibility of that impact while also recognizing this is part of my journey as well? And it’s really easy to determine you could have done something differently after the whole situation has unfolded and it’s not exactly the same while the situation is in progress and you’re doing the best that you can to employ a combination of presence and engaging with the different skills that you’ve learned through your education. Partnering that with what have I learned from previous experiences? So I think all of that can be challenging, recognizing that every engagement has a real felt impact on someone’s life.

Beren Goguen (19:31):
Did you find that talking with colleagues or even mentors was helpful during that time when you were kind of learning the ropes?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (19:39):
That was probably one of the most meaningful ways by which I learned more about myself. I have been really fortunate to have worked with and for organizations that are really open to providing honest feedback in a way that supports growth and also has the individual or the family at the forefront of their minds in terms of most important, and being aware of impacts on them. I had very really great mentors who were willing to be my truth tellers and tell me the times where there’s something that I could have done differently. There’s something I could have done better. There may not may. There were situations where I felt like I showed up to the best of my ability and it still could have been different and led to a better outcome. And those are the moments where engaging in that dialogue and hearing feedback from some mentors and people who I trust and who truly want to support my growth was really meaningful in shaping me as not a professional, but also as a person.

Beren Goguen (20:49):
So it’s kind of a combination of self-reflection and seeking constructive criticism from others being open to that?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (20:55):
Yeah, yeah, certainly requires a high level of self-reflection and a high level of openness to receive that feedback that sometimes in the moment can be really hard to hear that. I think it can also be really difficult when there are impacts, when there are impacts of that in terms of how someone else receives the information, how it made them feel. So definitely a lot of individual reflection, a lot of conversations. Absolutely.

Beren Goguen (21:27):
When a social worker has an interaction with a client that doesn’t go well or they make a recommendation and then it turns out maybe that wasn’t the right course, what’s the best way to handle that?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (21:38):
I think it varies depending on the situation, the type of impact and any consideration of harm that may have been caused. If there’s a situation where, say for example, someone was wanting to get connected with some type of services and something was suggested and then upon maybe checking in for supervision or talking to a colleague, I realize that there are different services available that feels like something that can be pretty quickly rectified in terms of reaching back out to the person, sharing a different handful of resources, assisting with the connection. I think that’s one way that feels like something that can easily be adjusted. I think the more complex situations are the ones where maybe I say something to someone and I cause harm and what I’m saying and independent from my intentions, that feels like an important part to name that even if my intentions were in the right place, that doesn’t change the impact that I had. And those can be the types of situations or conversations where it’s really important to check in with the person to see how they want to engage in any sort of conflict resolution or restorative justice depending on the level of what has occurred and how it’s landed for them. And I think that has a big ask for a lot of listening.

Beren Goguen (23:07):
There’s kind of a little bit of mystery in the public perception of what social work really is

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (23:13):
Yeah.

Beren Goguen (23:14):
Because it’s not one thing. It’s a lot of different components that go into it. There’s an expression, it’s an art, not a science. It’s a little bit of a platitude. But I think that kind of applies a little bit where there’s science and policy and economics and some more. There’s aspects to the job that are clearly defined by policy, law, just how you do the job according to training, and then there’s aspects of the job that aren’t well defined

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (23:41):
Right

Beren Goguen (23:41):
That are more difficult to navigate and understand. There’s emotion, empathy, these things. There’s no rule or way to go about that necessarily. So I think maybe people who are considering getting into the field have a lot of questions around that. You can’t always just be by the book everything and remove emotion that doesn’t really work, but you also can’t go too far on the other side of the spectrum. So how do you strike that balance, I guess maybe is a question that some people might have?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (24:08):
Yeah, I think first, I think you’re correct in the perception of social work as a whole and who a social worker is. What they do can be quite varied. One of the things that I’ve heard said within our profession is once you’ve met one social worker, you’ve met one social worker. Just in terms of the wide range of capacities and different ways that social workers are involved in different contexts. In terms of balancing things, from my own experience, I have found that it takes discernment on my part to tap into different parts of my social worker identity. There may be times and context where I feel like my role in the context is to listen and to understand and to recognize that someone has invited me into their life and their experiences and show up for that with presence. There are times where I feel like it could be an interaction that’s similar to that and what’s being asked of me is to share resources, to connect someone to a resource or a person or an organization that will improve the quality of their life or could support them while they’re in a hard time. Then there are times where I think working with, one of the other challenges that I think within social work is we’re working within a lot of systems and systems of different sizes, some really large complex systems, and change takes a very long time.

(25:39):
So there may be times where the listening and the just holding information where that needs to be put on the shelf for a little bit, and now is the time to say something, to take action, to engage with systems where there is clear oppression, where there is harm that is being done to people and taking action on that in a clear way, in a compassionate way, and in a confident way.

Beren Goguen (26:13):
If there was a situation where someone is being oppressed, how is that usually handled? I imagine this is one of those areas that a lot of people might be concerned about jumping into that aspect of the field cause that can be really difficult.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (26:25):
Yeah. Yeah, it can. Here too, I think it’s hard to give one answer to the various ways that oppression can occur and what that would look like and mean to somebody who’s in that experience. If there’s an individual situation of oppression that is observed or that somebody shares with someone, that could be handled one way in terms of immediately checking in with the person, learning more about what happened and figuring out what action steps are needed from there. If it’s something larger in terms of if you’re involved in an organization and there are practices or policies in place that are not equitable or a system that the system does not provide equitable opportunities to everyone, that’s a different type of preparation to figure out how to best engage with that. What could be the areas of impact for change and how to do that?

Beren Goguen (27:22):
Do social workers get involved with organizations as well as individuals? I guess I wasn’t aware that social workers did work with organizations. I thought it was primarily with families and individuals.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (27:33):
Yeah. So the main context for practice are spanning from micro to macro level, so micro level working with individuals, working with families, macro level or excuse me, meso level. Usually working with communities and organizations and groups, and then macro level that can be communities and organizations as well and larger systems. So yes, definitely working in different capacities sometimes with organizations, sometimes a smaller scale, more clinical individual practice.

Beren Goguen (28:06):
Can you tell us a little bit about your experience in the Master of Social Work program?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (28:10):
Yeah, so I completed the Distance Master of Social Work program through CSU out of Colorado Springs. So our distance program runs out of a few different cities, and at the time that I pursued my master’s in social work, I was working full-time and was hoping to continue my full-time employment. So was looking for a program that had some flexibility in scheduling that allowed for the option of some work to be completed asynchronously through a virtual environment where it didn’t have to be time tethered or synchronous sessions that are occurring at a time where everyone has to show up at the same time. And it was living in Denver. So I originally had not considered CSU thinking that all CSU programming would be out of Fort Collins and found the distance program and was very interested in, I would say three things. One, the flexible schedule was something that I was very interested in.

(29:10):
The other area that was appealing to me was that the perspective is an advanced generalist model, whereas some social work programs have a, you take some foundational classes and then you pick the specific area of social work that you want to study. So perhaps you want to work with children and families or you want to do something specific. In working with policy community social work, CSU has an advanced generalist perspective that equips social workers to work across all domains of the profession. And since I wanted to stay at my current job and didn’t know exactly what was on the horizon for me in terms of next steps that was most appealing to me, there wasn’t one specialty area that I wanted to focus on. So that was something I was really interested in. And then the third area that felt really important to me and was one of my highlights of the experience was that within the hybrid format and the distance model, a lot of the work happened online so I could do from home.

(30:10):
And there was also some built-in components that occurred in-person. So there were in-person learning weekends, it was a cohort model. So I was with the same group of peers throughout the duration of my program. And that was something that really fostered relationships and connection and getting to know, not just getting to learn from the program itself, but also getting to learn from my cohort. And there were a lot of people in my cohort who we all had very diverse backgrounds. Some of us were in social work, some were pursuing social work as a second career. So there was a lot of learning that happened in those connections that I had in person with people getting to connect on what we’re learning together, how we integrate our prior experiences and what we can learn from one another.

Beren Goguen (31:01):
I see you get that more collaborative learning benefit that way.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (31:05):
Yeah, that’s a good way to frame it. I think the collective learning environment is something that was a big part of my experience in getting to know others and learn from their experience. And then when we were together in person, we got to craft what our learning experience together looked like.

Beren Goguen (31:26):
I imagine that includes kind of having discussions about the course material or case studies and things like that.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (31:31):
Yeah, that’s correct. So depending on the different type, of course, some courses are practice courses where while we were engaging in the course, we were actually doing role plays of the different types of therapeutic skills that we would engage in the different type of listening or how we would engage in interventions with somebody. So a lot of role plays, a lot of getting to engage in practice skills and a lot of dialogue that included considering who we are in terms of how would I engage in this situation with an integration of the content that I’m learning. And that’s where I think it can become really, there’s a lot to be learned there because how I might engage with a situation could be different than how you engage with a situation, even though we’ve learned the same content, but I may have a slightly different practice approach than you will. So neither way of engaging is right or wrong. They’re just different based on who we are and how we are working with the content.

Beren Goguen (32:32):
So you get multiple angles on similar concepts. What are some of those learnings that you were able to put into practice right away?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (32:39):
A couple of them we touched on a little bit in terms of different types of communication skills, active listening, full presence with someone to be able to just slow down and engage with the person who’s in front of me. And I was in the social work field before completing my MSW, and it also served as a time for me to refine my skills and check back in on some of the things that I learned in my bachelor’s degree that I had maybe had a little bit of drift from where I know what active listening is, but I maybe didn’t do it all the time. So the refresher on some of those skills were really helpful so that I could immediately begin engaging in those, not just in my career, but also with my friends, with my family. Another area that the program really challenged me to do that I integrated right away was just engaging in critical thinking, and that was across different topics and different areas of my life where I really enjoy being a student. That’s something that I have always enjoyed, always liked doing, and that critical analysis of engaging with content and hearing multiple perspectives and recognizing that there’s a lot of room for dialogue about those different areas and learning together, and that can include differing perspectives and perhaps I view something one way and someone views it a different way, and how can we engage in a fruitful conversation about that, where we honor each other’s perspectives and still be willing to consider the other perspective and consider shifting my opinion based on new information coming in.

Beren Goguen (34:16):
So if you’ve ever gotten to a situation where you had a different perspective from a client and it was just an impasse, you just can’t seem to break through, how would you handle that?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (34:27):
Yeah, so I have not actually had that happen where myself or the individual that we had such differing perspectives that we were not able to engage in a process together. If that happens, I think one thing that is most helpful immediately is for the social worker to engage in supervision, to bring someone else into the dialogue, to be able to have a productive conversation about here’s what’s going on, here’s what’s happening, here’s the juncture that we’re at, that perhaps I as a social worker don’t feel comfortable continuing to engage in this relationship. Or perhaps the individual does not feel comfortable. If that’s something that an individual requests in a lot of circumstances, that’s something to be honored. Depending on the nature of the service provision, if it’s mandated, that could be a slightly different conversation. But in those circumstances, this is where that use of self is really important.

(35:21):
We all have biases, we all have parts of ourselves that we bring to the job and that we bring to working with other people. So I have a responsibility to be aware of what those are for me, so that if I encounter a situation where I feel like I cannot abide by the ethical code within the profession and show up in a way that is supporting the person in how they want to be supported, then that’s something that I may need to step back from so that someone else who could be a better support can step in on that situation.

Beren Goguen (35:57):
What advice would you give to other people who are considering a Master’s in social work, and what are some of the advantages to additional education

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (36:04):
For someone who is considering their master’s in social work? I think a good place to start would be to just to lead with curiosity. If it’s someone who, whether you’re in the social work field or do not know a lot about the social work field, learning more about what it is, what it entails, it can be helpful to talk to others who have their master’s in social work or have worked in the profession just to learn a little bit about their experiences. With that said, I do think it’s also important to sort of hold that loosely just because of the versatility of the profession. So one person’s experience in the profession may be drastically different than someone else’s. So lots of data collection I think can be helpful for someone to determine if this is an educational experience that they want to pursue. I think another guidepost that can be helpful if considering the program is that there isn’t one set pathway or journey for the program.

(37:02):
There are multiple different program options, different ways that the program can be completed, and those can all occur very differently. So there may be one student who upon entering the program, knows exactly what it is that they want to do, post graduation. They have a specific area of practice that they know they want to go in. So their MSW is to help support them to be able to engage in that career path. There are many other students who engage in the program and they don’t know what they want to do. So part of their process is going to be a clarification process of figuring out what do I want to do within this profession? What options are there that I’m not even aware of? Where can I contribute? Where can I contribute best based on who I am? Where am I at my life in terms of how I want to engage in different capacities?

(37:58):
Whether that’s working on an individual level of practice or doing something that’s more macro oriented, recognizing that it’s not going to be the same for everyone can be helpful and freeing. One of the things that comes up fairly often with new students starting our program is some concern about if they don’t have a clear career trajectory that they know that they are on, if they don’t know what they want to do for their internships, which occurred during the program, if they don’t know what area of practice they want to work in, that can cause some concern. And my response to that would be that that’s okay. And really what the program experience is intended to do is to help you gain clarity on what areas do you want to work in, what skill sets are your strengths that you want to carry through to your career? Sort of related to that, but slightly different I think is just recognizing that there’s the goal and the outcome of obtaining an MSW. And then there’s also the process in which someone is participating and paying attention to the process can be really helpful.

Beren Goguen (39:07):
So someone coming into the program might have some preconceptions about what they want their career to be,

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (39:12):
Mhmm.

Beren Goguen (39:12):
But that could change a little bit over the course as they learn more.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (39:16):
Yeah. We have our set curriculum, and then we also have built into our curriculum some options for students to take electives that they get to select based on their interest areas. And I would say getting to engage in those different, the courses, the core curriculum and also the electives are one of the ways that help clarify what students want to do. We have had a lot of dialogues with students who came in and knew exactly what they wanted to do and post-graduation exactly what they did, and then students who knew exactly what they wanted to do and post-graduation are doing something entirely different. So it really is a process of discovery of getting to learn content and getting to learn about yourself and getting to learn from other people and learn from community partners

Beren Goguen (39:57):
Well, that’s great. To not have a rigid expectation is good for sure.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (40:02):
I think some students would agree with this, but I think I can speak from my own experience here too, and recognizing that my learning experience in the MSW program didn’t occur exactly how I thought it would, and that was okay because there were things that came into the program that I learned, things that I had no idea those weren’t on my radar, that they were going to be things that I’d learned about myself or about others or about the social work profession. So being willing to consider that the learning that’s going to happen could be different than what you’re thinking it’s going to be at the start of the program, and that’s okay. That’s not good or bad, it’s just a different type of experience.

Beren Goguen (40:40):
Might even be the intention maybe.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (40:41):
Yeah, yeah. Really being able to assess how do I want to show up for this and what is that going to look like? How am I going to contribute to my own learning experience? How do I want to show up for the collective learning experience? And then what are we crafting together as we’re learning?

Beren Goguen (41:02):
If someone is a little bit on the fence about reaching out for help with a family member or another individual, what’s something that you would say to that person in terms of their reluctance to get involved with a social work solution?

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (41:16):
Yeah, I think that’s an important question, and a lot of that is going to be contingent upon what exactly the circumstances, what the level of health and safety concerns are. If it’s not an imminent health and safety concern, I think one of the areas that’s important to respect and consider is the individual’s level of readiness. If they feel like they’re at the point where they are ready to invite someone else into the process, it can certainly be more intimidating and feel like more of a risk to reach out to a paid professional, which is what a lot of social workers are, to reach out to them and know that there’s going to be a level of disclosure and there’s going to have to be some rapport building to be able to trust the person to truly invite them into your life. So it could be helpful to first talk with a friend or talk with a family member, talk with someone that you trust and engage in that process to figure out where you’re at with your readiness, to connect with someone else who may have some additional resources for you, who may have some suggestions for additional support.

(42:19):
I think inviting anyone into the dialogue when we’re in a hard time is a really helpful first step, and that can be, like I said, that could be someone that you trust in terms of a family member or that could be calling a therapist or calling an organization who you have not had contact with before, and perhaps sharing about the situation with a little lower level of vulnerability, but inviting some of their expertise and learning more about resources.

Beren Goguen (42:48):
Thanks again for being here.

Mindy Van Kalsbeek (42:50):
Thank you. It’s been great to be here.

Beren Goguen (42:54):
Thanks for joining us for this episode of Applied. If you’d like to learn more about the Hybrid Master of Social Work Program from CSU, you can find a link to the webpage in the show notes. If you a friend or a family member are dealing with a disability, mental health challenge, addiction, abuse, or poverty, consider reaching out to your local health and human services department to speak with a licensed social worker. Take care.