Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College - CUNY

Professionals come to Learning & Development at the Silberman School of Social Work to keep pace with complex and rapidly changing fields. Our professional development and training programs focus on developing core skills, including: client engagement, equity and inclusion, and stress management. We blend traditional classroom instruction with distance learning technologies, and aim to instill a sense of confidence in learners by giving them tools to meet the challenges of their professional lives. With decades of experience in adult learning and professional development, we excel at working with individuals and organizations to create customized programs and events.

A hub of learning and professional growth

Social workers, caseworkers, geriatric care managers, legal guardians, home health aides and others employed in helping professions come to us to keep pace with complex and rapidly changing fields and to expand and sharpen their skills.

Our professional development offerings are designed to encourage and assist individuals and entire agencies, both public and private, in achieving their specific performance goals and goals for their clients.

Meeting the needs of professionals at all levels

We offer many learning opportunities throughout the year designed to meet the needs of individuals who are new to their roles, job positions and responsibilities as well as seasoned professionals. Courses and training modules ranging in duration from one to five days transfer knowledge and teach practical skills that people can use immediately in their daily work.

Expertise in the areas that matter most

• The health of workers who serve vulnerable adults
• Engaging victims of abuse and their abusers
• Protecting individuals from abuse and exploitation
• Managing risk and liability in individual cases

And more…

We offer learning opportunities that help human services professionals become knowledgeable and adept practitioners in these and other fundamental areas of practice.

Coaching that improves core skills

New workers as well as experienced professionals sometimes need to sharpen their skills – from writing and verbal communication to creative problem-solving, critical thinking and equity and inclusion. Individuals working in the field of human services also need to develop reliable strategies for coping with stress and working effectively with colleagues and supervisors.

We offer a variety of courses which meet these needs, often blending traditional classroom instruction with distance learning technologies such as online synchronous classes, audio-conferencing, webinars, and podcasts.

Instruction in the art of “management”

Public sector agencies typically devote considerable resources to training staff that directly serve clients. But rarely do these agencies have the capacity in-house to provide the level of training and coaching that supervisors and managers need to effectively lead, oversee and motivate staff.

Our workshop series and courses assist experienced as well as aspiring supervisors in developing essential leadership skills:

• Basic supervision
• Platform skills
• Performance improvement

Fruitful partnerships with government

For more than 25 years, we have partnered with government to provide opportunities for frontline service providers, supervisors and managers to become more skilled, confident and effective on the job. The result: work that is more rewarding and is more beneficial to the individuals being served.

Our core partners are the New York State Office of Temporary and Disability Assistance and the New York Office of Children and Family Services.

A commitment to quality

The many courses, workshops and other learning opportunities that we offer are based on established best practices and empirical evidence about what works.

Equally important, we use evaluate our training, using accepted research practices to measure the quality and impact of each course offerings, making improvements whenever necessary to provide learning opportunities that are engaging and effective.