Tele-Behavioral Health Education Program

Social workers have provided tele-behavioral health services for decades in various contexts including crisis intervention, palliative care, veterans affairs, and legal settings. Emergency orders related to the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly expanded the use of tele-behavioral health services for mental health, psychiatric, and substance use treatment. As policymakers codify and embrace tele-behavioral health, many social workers now offer telephonic and live audio/video meetings as part of routine service delivery. However, tele-behavioral health services have unique ethical, legal, and technical obligations for providing social work care. The Tele-Behavioral Health Education Program began at the University of Maryland School of Social Work in August 2022 to train all social work students to collaborate with people through the competent use of technology. Specifically, the program aims to ensure all MSW students:  

• Recognize digital technologies as tools for facilitating social work interventions at the micro, mezzo, and macro levels
• Understand the additional ethical considerations for tele-behavioral health practice 
• Examine the strengths and limitations of tele-behavioral health service provision 
• Enhance their digital social work skills through experiential learning activities in the classroom and field practicum  

• Collaborate with faculty to infuse telehealth content and competencies into existing social work courses 
• Co-instruct the Tele-Behavioral Health – Delivery of Clinical Social Work Services elective 
• Facilitate workshops in partnership with the Office of Continuing Professional Education 
• Maintain two foundation field placements that use telehealth modalities to deliver case management and interprofessional healthcare 
• Co-facilitate President’s Clinic—an interprofessional training rotation in a pediatric specialty clinic that teaches team-based care using in-person and telehealth appointments