The Council on Social Work Education accredits social work education programs at both the baccalaureate and master's levels. TheBSW program and the MSW program at Widener are fully accredited by the Council on Social Work Education.
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) uses the Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) to accredit baccalaureate and master’s level social work programs. EPAS supports academic excellence by establishing thresholds for professional competence. It permits programs to use traditional and emerging models and methods of curriculum design by balancing requirements that promote comparable outcomes across programs with a level of flexibility that encourages programs to differentiate. EPAS describe four features of an integrated curriculum design: (1) program mission and goals, (2) explicit curriculum, (3) implicit curriculum, and (4) assessment. The educational policy and the accreditation standards are conceptually linked to each other. Educational Policy describes each curriculum feature. Accreditation standards are derived from the Educational policy and specify the requirements used to develop and maintain an accredited social work program at the baccalaureate (B) or master’s (M) level. (taken from CSWE website 6/20/16)
Here is a link to the CSWE 2015 EPAS: http://www.cswe.org/File.aspx?id=81660
Widener University’s Center for Social Work Education embraces these standards and has used them as the basis for our curriculum. The following lists the Social Work Practice, Education, and Educational Policy and Accreditation Standards (EPAS) of the Council for Social Work Education. Each policy is further developed through the use of Core Practice Behaviors (CPB) and Advanced PracticeBehaviors (APB).