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NSAG / Continuing Education / Social Work · SW-CE
ENROLLMENT NOT YET OPEN Accreditation applications in process across all 7 CE types. Book a discovery call to discuss institutional access or co-accreditation partnerships.
CE Specialty Track PREREQUISITE: Core CE Program Required

Trauma-Informed Social Work and Legal Navigation Governance

Your clients navigate legal institutions that activate their threat responses before a word is spoken. Up to 90% of justice-involved individuals have experienced trauma. Most social workers have no governance framework for assessing whether the institutions they work in or refer clients to meet trauma-informed design standards.

1.0
SW-CE Credit Hours
1
Add-On Sessions
On-Demand
Self-Paced Format
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SW-CE Specialty Track

Social Work CE

Your clients navigate legal institutions that activate their threat responses before a word is spoken. Up to ninety percent of justice-involved individuals have experienced at least one traumatic event. The waiting rooms, security checkpoints, English-only signage, and adversarial procedural design of the institutions they navigate were not built with that knowledge applied.

Session SW1 gives social workers the SAMHSA Four R’s framework, the NSAG M1 governance dimensions applied to social work practice environments and legal navigation contexts, and the NASW Code of Ethics obligations — Provisions 1.01, 3.07, and 6.04 — that arise when those environments fall short. The session concludes with drafting a governance advocacy letter to a court administrator.

Who This Is For
  • Licensed Clinical Social Workers (LCSW)
  • Licensed Social Workers (LSW)
  • MSW students in field placement (with supervisor confirmation)
  • Social work supervisors and administrators
  • Social workers in legal aid, child welfare, family court, mental health, and medical settings
Accreditation Status
NASW (National Association of Social Workers) — ACE Program
1.0 CE clock hour — pending NASW ACE provider approval
In Process

Applying through Hawaii Chapter NASW or national NASW ACE program. State social work licensing board requirements must be verified separately for each jurisdiction.

What’s Included

Each Session Includes

  • ✓Pre-test (5 questions per session)
  • ✓Timed prerecorded video session (60 minutes)
  • ✓Post-test (5 questions per session; minimum 80% required for credit)
  • ✓Practice application exercise (active written or structured response required)
  • ✓Certificate of completion (issued on post-test completion; includes CE type and credit hours)
  • ✓Written materials package (substantive outline, authority map, and hypothetical with model analysis)
Prerequisite

Core CE Program Required

This specialty track is an add-on to the 15-session NSAG Core CE Program. The core curriculum must be completed before enrolling in this track. The core program introduces the four-tier governance framework, six-dimension scoring model, and module-specific evidence bases that this track builds on.

View Core CE Program →
Session Structure

60-Minute Timed Agenda · Every Session

Both sessions in this track follow the same 60-minute structure. Pre-test and post-test are required for credit. The practice application exercise requires an active written or structured response.

Time Duration Segment Content Credit-Eligible
0:00–0:03 3 min Welcome & Disclaimers No legal/medical advice disclaimer; speaker conflict of interest disclosure; CE accreditation status statement; content validation date stated No
0:03–0:08 5 min Pre-Test 5-question pre-test assessing baseline knowledge of the session’s governance domain content. Required for credit. Yes
0:08–0:12 4 min Overview & Learning Objectives Three learning objectives stated; governance problem for this session introduced in one sentence with the primary evidence source named Yes
0:12–0:22 10 min The Governance Problem Evidence base for the governance gap: primary source cited, verbatim key finding presented, governance implication stated Yes
0:22–0:35 13 min Evidence Base & Research Foundation 2–3 primary peer-reviewed sources: study summary, verbatim key finding, DOI displayed; governance implication per source Yes
0:35–0:45 10 min Six Governance Dimensions Each dimension defined and illustrated with a profession-specific institutional example Yes
0:45–0:50 5 min PIONEERING Governance Standards Full PIONEERING tier criteria for this module — observable, documentable governance standards that distinguish PIONEERING from EMERGING Yes
0:50–0:57 7 min Practice Application Exercise Structured exercise requiring active written or multiple-choice response. Completion required for credit. Yes
0:57–1:00 3 min Post-Test & Certificate 5-question post-test; minimum 80% score required for credit; certificate of completion issued on successful completion Yes
Learning Outcomes

What You’ll Be Able to Do

Session SW1 · 1.0 CE Clock Hour

Trauma-Informed Social Work and Legal Navigation

1

Apply SAMHSA Four R’s to identify trauma-activation features in a described social work practice environment or legal navigation context

Competency: Human Behavior (C7); Engage with Individuals (C6) Evidence: Post-test: identify Four R’s failures in a described court or legal aid environment
2

Assess a described institution across all six NSAG M1 governance dimensions — physical environment, procedural design, language access, staff training, accommodation, and feedback mechanisms — and identify the highest-priority governance deficit

Competency: Policy Practice (C5); Engage Organizations (C8) Evidence: Application exercise: score a described legal aid organization on two M1 dimensions with documented justification
3

Identify at least two NASW Code of Ethics obligations arising when a social work practice environment or referral setting does not meet trauma-informed governance standards

Competency: Professional Identity (C1); Ethics (C2) Evidence: Post-test: identify Code provisions implicated by a described institutional governance failure
Sample Course Content

Practice Hypothetical & Model Analysis

The following is a representative hypothetical from this specialty track. Each session includes a practice application exercise based on a realistic institutional scenario. The model analysis below represents the level of analysis expected from practitioners completing this course.

Session SW1 · Trauma-Informed Social Work and Legal Navigation

Hypothetical SW1: The Family Court Building

You are an LCSW at a legal aid organization serving domestic violence survivors. Your organization is in a shared building with a general legal aid clinic and an immigration services office. The shared waiting room has: open seating with no visual privacy between clients, no separate entrance for DV clients who may fear being seen by their abusers, one gender-binary restroom shared with all building occupants, signage in English and Spanish only (the building serves significant Marshallese-speaking populations), a loud television broadcasting news, and no structured intake question asking about safety or trauma history.

Your client today, a DV survivor with a documented PTSD diagnosis, arrived 45 minutes ago. She will testify in a custody hearing in 30 minutes. She appears visibly activated.

Discussion Questions
  1. Apply SAMHSA Four R’s. For each of the four, identify whether this environment Realizes, Recognizes, Responds to, or Resists re-traumatization of DV survivors. Provide one specific example for each.
  2. Score the environment on THREE NSAG M1 dimensions. For each, assign a tier (PIONEERING/EMERGING/DEVELOPING/EARLY STAGE) and justify.
  3. Your organization’s executive director has told you renovations are ‘not in the budget.’ Which NASW Code provisions establish your ongoing advocacy obligation?
  4. Draft a one-paragraph needs statement you could use in a grant application to fund a physical environment redesign for DV client-serving spaces.
Model Analysis
  1. SAMHSA Four R’s: Realize — failing: no formal institutional policy acknowledging trauma prevalence in the DV client population. Recognize — failing: no structured intake safety or trauma question; no formal protocol for identifying trauma-triggered responses in waiting clients. Respond — failing: shared waiting room with no private space, no separate entry, no gender-neutral restroom; the environment does not allow the organization to respond appropriately to trauma presentation. Resist re-traumatization — failing: television noise, public exposure, binary restroom, English/Spanish-only signage all create re-traumatization risk for DV survivors, LGBTQ+ clients, and Marshallese-speaking clients.
  2. Dimension scoring: Physical environment design — EARLY STAGE: no documented standards, shared waiting space, no visual privacy, no separate DV entry. Interpreter and translation access — EARLY STAGE: Marshallese-speaking population not served; no documented interpreter access protocol. Feedback and accountability mechanisms — EARLY STAGE: no independent feedback mechanism; clients would have to raise concerns directly with the staff who work in the environment they are critiquing.
  3. NASW Code obligations: Provision 3.07 (administration): social workers who provide services through organizations ‘should advocate within and outside their agencies for adequate resources.’ The budget constraint does not eliminate the advocacy obligation — it defines the target. Provision 6.04: ‘social workers should engage in social and political action that seeks to ensure that all people have equal access to the resources, employment, services, and opportunities they require.’ The language access gap and physical safety gap are both equity issues requiring advocacy.
  4. Grant needs statement: ‘This organization serves domestic violence survivors in a shared building environment that does not meet trauma-informed design standards, creating identifiable barriers to safety and access. Specific deficits include the absence of visual privacy in waiting areas, lack of a dedicated entry pathway for safety-sensitive populations, and language access limitations for Marshallese-speaking clients. Funding is requested to redesign client-facing spaces to include private consultation rooms, a dedicated client entry, and multilingual wayfinding, consistent with SAMHSA’s Six Principles of Trauma-Informed Care.’

This model analysis represents the depth of reasoning expected in the practice application exercise. The post-test (minimum 80%) assesses conceptual mastery of the session’s evidence base and governance framework.

View the full Evidence Library → for the primary sources cited in this and all other specialty track sessions.

Related Tracks

Practitioners Who Take This Track Also Benefit From

CLE
Law Specialty Track

The Law track (Session L1) covers trauma-informed governance in legal settings from the attorney’s perspective, using the same SAMHSA Four R’s framework as Session SW1. Social workers and attorneys frequently work with the same clients in the same legal environments. Taking both tracks provides a cross-disciplinary governance vocabulary for institutional advocacy.

View track →
Psych-CE
Psychology Specialty Track

The Psychology track (Session Psy1) covers affective neuroscience applied to institutional design, providing the neurobiological evidence base for why trauma-informed governance matters. Social workers who consult to or collaborate with psychologists on institutional design benefit from understanding the neuroscience foundation.

View track →
Institutional Access

License This Track for Your Organization

Institutional licensing includes cohort enrollment across both the Core CE Program and this specialty track, facilitator support, and options to integrate with existing CE tracking systems. Pricing includes all 15 core sessions plus this specialty add-on.

$5,000
1–50 employees
Core CE + This Specialty Track
$10,000
51–200 employees
Core CE + This Specialty Track
$15,000
201+ employees
Core CE + This Specialty Track
Inquire About Institutional Access
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Program description · All learning outcomes · Full 60-minute timed agenda · Accreditation status · No enrollment required.

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