The fields of law and social work are interconnected and collaboration between the two disciplines is valuable to clients as well as to practitioners. When collaborations go well, clients are better served. Experiential training in interdisciplinary teams is useful for building collaboration skills and crossing a professional “cultural divide” by emphasizing differences in communication patterns and ethical philosophies. Through this interdisciplinary experience, pre-professional students learn to work together as team members in order to best utilize the expertise and insights of each discipline. Interdisciplinary training creates stronger, more ethical interdisciplinary teams.
This presentation will discuss the practicalities of building collaboration and how interdisciplinary programs have improved the education of students and the delivery of services to clients. It will describe a newly formed joint program between the University of Arkansas Law School and the University of Arkansas School of Social Work. We will compare this new model to that of a different interdisciplinary clinic experience, the Juvenile Justice Center at Suffolk University Law School. Attendees will benefit from hearing the perspectives of the clinicians in each of these programs as well as the social workers.
We will outline lessons learned from the development of these programs and techniques utilized to address challenges. Individual student characteristics (biases and pre-conceived ideas), congruent and incongruent professional roles and ethical codes, the challenges of team teaching across disciplines and communication styles all have implications for program development and sustainability.
Attendees who already participate in interdisciplinary programs will be asked to identify issues that they have experienced in collaborative teaching and how they addressed them. Attendees who have not taught in interdisciplinary programs will brainstorm ways to introduce interdisciplinary experiences into their clinics. Participants should take away at least one idea for cross-professional collaboration that is implementable in their home school.