Resources for Career Advancement: Continuing Education
The world never stops changing and a social worker never stops learning. The profession’s ethical standards require social workers to stay informed of new research and practice techniques. Social workers continually need professional development hours both to maintain active licenses and to enhance their professional expertise and advance in the field. Knowing how many and which courses to take, then tracking when they were completed and renewal deadlines, takes a lot of organization.
To make it easier for social workers to manage their continuing education, NASW offers hundreds of courses that its members can access for free or at discounted rates. The courses are offered in a variety of formats from webinars and webcasts to self-study courses and in-person presentations.
The options cover more than 60 different topics ranging from general social work to child welfare and schools to mental health and substance abuse and much more. All of the courses in NASW’s Social Work Online CE Institute are accredited by either the NASW National Office or one of our chapters.
“We’re always creating new content to keep members current in their practices,” said Raffaele Vitelli, vice president of professional education and product development. “This year, members streamed nearly 70,000 hours of continuing education content.”
NASW offers CE Tracker an innovative tool that allows social workers to keep track of changing license renewal requirements and their progress towards them. NASW members can subscribe to CE tracker for just $25 per year.
“CE Tracker is an incredibly useful tool because it eliminates uncertainty. Once enrolled, you always know exactly what you need to meet license renewal requirements in the state (or states) where you are licensed,” said Vitelli. “It gives you the amount and type of CE needed and the renewal deadlines.”
CE Tracker is designed to suggest relevant NASW courses. It also conveniently recognizes uploaded, completed programs outside of NASW. The CE Tracker is also fully integrated with the Social Work Online CE Institute, enabling members to access those tools using the same login credentials without needing to create new profiles. Additionally, both CE Tracker and the Social Work Online CE Institute are fully device responsive and can be used across an array of devices such as tablets and smartphones.
It saves you hours of time they’d otherwise spend loading completed programs and researching specific requirements and deadlines in your state.
NASW’s professional development opportunities help social workers maintain their licenses and credentials as well as grow into new practice areas amidst their already busy schedules.