Teaching Social Work Writing Diane S. Falk (The Richard Stockton College of New Jersey) and Phyllis G. Ross (Western Connecticut State University) (2001). Teaching social work writing: An integrative approach. The Journal of Baccalaureate Social Work, 6 (2), 125-41. ABSTRACT This article presents an approach to teaching social work writing within the core social work curriculum. Writing is recognized as critical to effective professional practice and as an essential social work skill. Writing is also presented as a strategy for teaching social work knowledge, values and skills. The authors share what they have learned and developed on the basis of their own teaching experiences with baccalaureate social work students. They identify nine purposes of social work writing, linking assignments with each purpose and discussing how the assignments can be used to teach social work writing skills concurrently with other core social work skills. INTRODUCTION Writing is an essential social work skill. Social workers who can write a well-constructed report, a clear description of a client, or a persuasive memorandum or letter, are more effective in serving the interests of their client systems. By presenting the lives and living conditions of oppressed persons to service providers and to the community at large, social workers can empower client systems and put a human face on social issues. The authors‟ experiences as teachers in baccalaureate social work programs, and as long-term social work practitioners, have convinced them that a significant proportion of BSW students lack the writing skills to carry out their social work responsibilities effectively. In this paper, the authors share what they have learned from an inquiry into social work writing, having informed their work with a search of the literature and an informal survey of other baccalaureate social work faculty. The authors identify nine purposes of social work writing: to understand and care for the self; to communicate the self to others; to understand the perspective of others; to describe; to analyze; to be accountable; to persuade diverse audiences; to participate in knowledge-building; and to represent the profession to society. Using these nine purposes as a framework for presenting their approach to teaching social work writing, the authors describe assignments that give students opportunities to practice the writing skills they will need as social work practitioners. The approach presented here integrates instruction in social work writing with the acquisition of social work knowledge, values and skills, and the development of the professional self. THE SOCIAL WORK LITERATURE The authors searched the social work literature to determine what issues related to social work writing have been discussed. First they examined readily available guidelines for teaching social work writing. The Council on Social Work Education‟s Curriculum policy statement for baccalaureate degree programs in social work (1994) states simply that “oral and written professional communications” should be “consistent with the language of the practicum setting and of the profession” (Standard B6.16c). Writing manuals cover grammar, spelling, punctuation, appropriate language, and issues related to planning, drafting, and revising documents. They also cover the standard style formats used by journals and required in student papers (MLA and APA). As helpful as such guidelines are for writers in all academic disciplines, they do not address some significant issues specific to social work writing. NASW‟s Professional writing for the human services (Beebe, 1993) sets the tone for social work writing for publication, addressing a professional social work audience, and serving as a guide to advanced practitioners and educators. Most textbooks on generalist social work practice give very little, if any, attention to writing skills except in the context of record keeping for agency practice. Although other social