Here at Lakehead University our program provides you with an opportunity to learn the necessary knowledge and skills to begin your career as a social worker. We pride ourselves on providing a program that is challenging, meaningful, and applicable to a range of professional practice settings. We also are committed to you — our students — through the use of small classes, innovative teaching methods and outstanding placement settings.

The School of Social Work at Lakehead University delivers a Generalist undergraduate degree while our graduate program provides an Advanced Generalist degree.  The School has an innovative program based on an ecological view of social work practice. This approach stresses the social worker’s role in providing and facilitating a comprehensive range of helping experiences which relate to the client’s needs as a whole person. 

School of Social Work Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation

Mission Statement

The Mission of the School of Social Work is to provide leadership for excellence including…

• Supporting a strong and vital human services community and providing generalist social work education, which is sensitive to the needs of:
  • Northwestern Ontario including the traditional lands of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, the Robinson Superior Treaty and Treaty 3 (Thunder Bay Campus).
  • South Central Ontario including the traditional territory of the Anishinaabeg (Orillia Campus).

Curriculum Statement

In accordance with this Mission, the School advocates the following, in curriculum development, to prepare students for practice:

• An appreciation of diversity, and imbalances of societal power, as related to Indigenous peoples, age, ethnicity, gender, generational cohorts, geography, race, range of ability, religion, sexuality, language or socioeconomic class.
• An ability to integrate multiple perspectives, based on these above-mentioned facets of diversity, and thereby to respond to individual, family, group, community, organizational, and societal needs.
• An emphasis on social work practice in rural, remote, and northern environments.

TRC Call to Action # 1

We call upon the federal, provincial, territorial, and Aboriginal governments to commit to reducing the number of Aboriginal children in care by: 

1. Monitoring and assessing neglect investigations
2. Providing adequate resources to enable Aboriginal communities and child-welfare organizations to keep Aboriginal families together where it is safe to do so, and to keep children in culturally appropriate environments, regardless of where they reside.
3. Ensuring that social workers and others who conduct child-welfare investigations are properly educated and trained about the history and impacts of residential schools.
4. Ensuring that social workers and others who conduct child-welfare investigations are properly educated and trained about the potential for Aboriginal communities and families to provide more appropriate solutions to family healing.
5. Requiring that all child-welfare decision makers consider the impact of the residential school experience on children and their caregivers.

Mandatory Course: Yes

HBSW 4-Year Social Work Program

SW4411 Social Work Practice and Indigenous People (.5 Credit) Year 3

The School of Social Work also offers the following Indigenous specific program:

Honors Bachelor in Social Work FOUR YEAR PROGRAM with Major Concentration in Indigenous Learning (Thunder Bay only)

• Indigenous Learning 1100 (1) Introduction to Indigenous Learning
• Indigenous Learning 1310 (.5) Methods/Approaches to Indigenous Learning

One FCE Elective in Indigenous Learning (1):

• Indigenous Learning 2805 (1) Native Canadian World Views
• Indigenous Learning 3501 (1) Native Narratives, Myths, Legends & Ceremonies

One FCE Elective in Indigenous Learning at the 2nd or 3rd Year Level

• SW 4411 (.5) Social Work Practice and Indigenous Peoples
• SW 3500 or SW 4500 must involve practice experience with Indigenous people

School of Social Work Commitment to Call to Action 1 # 3, 4 and 5: 3 out of 3 = 100%

3	History and impact of residential schools (theory)
	Yes. At least 3 mandatory classes on Indigenous worldviews and approaches to social work.
4	Potential for Aboriginal communities and families to provide more appropriate solutions to family healing (practice)
	Yes.
5	All child welfare decision makers consider the impact of the residential school experience on children and their caregivers
	Yes. See # 3 above

Compliance with CASWE/ACFTS Statement of Complicity and Commitment to Change  At the May 27th, 2017 Board meeting, the Board of Directors of CASWE-ACFTS committed to ensuring that social work education in Canada contributes to transforming Canada’s colonial reality and approved a “Statement of Complicity and Commitment to Change”. “This is an important step in engaging social work education in the reconciliation process and supporting the Truth and Reconciliation Calls to Action” affirms CASWE-ACFTS President, Dr. Susan Cadel. Of the 12 actions articulated in the “Statement of Complicity and Commitment to Change, the following two are directed at Schools of Social Work

7	Will encourage institutional members to post a territorial acknowledgement on their School’s website and post a link to the CAUT guide to territorial acknowledgement on the CASWE-ACFTS website to assist Schools with this task
	Lakehead University respectfully acknowledges its campuses are located on the traditional lands of Fort William First Nation, Signatory to the Robinson Superior Treaty of 1850 and the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Pottawatomi nations, collectively known as the Three Fires Confederacy. School of Social Work – Home Page and Lakehead University – Home Page
8	Will encourage and support Canadian schools of social work in revising mission statements, governance processes, curriculum, and pedagogy in ways that both advance the TRC recommendations and the overall indigenization of social work education
	Yes, see Mission Statement | Lakehead University

NOTE: All content has been submitted to the respective faculty for validation to ensure accuracy and currency as of the time of posting. The Lakehead University School of Social Work reviewed and approved the document. Managing Editor: Douglas Sinclair: Publisher, Indigenous Watchdog Lead Researcher, Julia Dubé