Forensic Social Work 2
FORENSIC SOCIAL WORK 2: ESSENTIAL LEGAL SKILLS FOR PRACTICE
| Delivery Method | Online |
| Dates | April 12 - May 2, 2027 |
| Time | No scheduled lecture times (asynchronous delivery) |
| Registration |
黄色直播 the Presenter
Shawna Paris, ONS, KC, MSW, RSW-CS, BCCH, PhD (stud.), is a lawyer, clinical social worker, educator, and forensic social work specialist. She brings a rare interdisciplinary lens to the relationship between law, social work, mental health, trauma, and justice, grounded in approximately thirty years of legal experience and more than twenty years of clinical social work practice.
Shawna has extensive experience in litigation, courtroom advocacy, adjudication, and clinical law teaching. For approximately three decades, she has taught clinical law practice and mentored emerging legal professionals in client representation, legal interviewing, case preparation, court documentation, advocacy, professional responsibility, and courtroom procedure. Her teaching is grounded in the practical realities of legal practice, where preparation, credibility, ethical judgment, documentation, and clear communication can significantly affect client outcomes.
As a lawyer, Shawna has appeared at all levels of court, including the Supreme Court of Canada. Her legal practice has included criminal law, youth justice, child protection, family law, human rights, mental health law, and administrative legal matters. She has also appeared before the Senate of Canada鈥檚 Human Rights Committee, contributing her legal, social justice, and human rights expertise to national policy and legislative discussions.
In addition to her litigation and advocacy work, Shawna has adjudicated quasi-legal and rights-based matters involving law, mental health, capacity, liberty, treatment, and procedural fairness. This experience gives her a sophisticated understanding of how legal principles are applied in courtrooms, tribunals, administrative hearings, mental health proceedings, and other decision-making forums where clients鈥� rights, autonomy, safety, and dignity may be at stake.
Her courtroom experience includes preparing and presenting evidence, working with affidavits and reports, organizing legal records, understanding the role of expert and professional witnesses, and appreciating how clinical, cultural, and social context evidence may be examined in legal proceedings. She understands how judges, lawyers, Crown attorneys, tribunal members, and decision-makers assess credibility, relevance, objectivity, and professional opinion.
Shawna is also the founder of the National Institute of Forensic Social Work in Canada, established in 2016. As a specialist in forensic social work, she serves on the Board of Directors for the Forensic Social Work Alliance [formerly the National Organization of Forensic Social Work (NOFSW)] in the United States. Her areas of expertise include criminal law, youth justice, child protection, family law, mental health law, human rights, trauma-informed practice, culturally responsive forensic social work, and forensic social work education.
Shawna鈥檚 doctoral studies focus on forensic social work education, with particular attention to how practitioners are prepared for legal, quasi-legal, institutional, and justice-related practice settings. This makes her especially well-positioned to teach forensic social work from a real-world legal perspective, helping learners understand not only what happens in court and quasi-legal proceedings but also how to prepare for them, communicate effectively, produce court-ready documentation, and protect the integrity of their professional role in legal and court-connected matters.
Her teaching is grounded in the belief that social workers and human service professionals require legal literacy, ethical clarity, cultural humility, and strong advocacy skills to work effectively with individuals, families, and communities affected by complex systems.
Course Overview
Forensic social work is an expanding and increasingly important sub-specialty field of practice. As access to justice challenges continue to grow, social workers and human service professionals are being called upon to take on more complex roles within legal, quasi-legal, and institutional settings. These roles may include legal navigation, litigation support, community legal work, collaborative family law practice, child protection support, corrections work, probation services, forensic hospital practice, and advocacy within specialty courts.
This FSW Level 2 course builds on foundational legal knowledge and introduces participants to essential legal skills for forensic social work practice. It is designed for learners who want to strengthen their ability to work confidently and ethically at the intersection of social work and the law.
Across Canada, legal systems are increasingly using both adversarial and non-adversarial approaches, including settlement conferences, mediation, conciliation, parenting coordination, restorative practices, and therapeutic courts. At the same time, many areas of law continue to require strong advocacy, formal evidence, courtroom preparation, documentation, and testimony. Social workers are often positioned at the centre of these processes, supporting clients, preparing records, collaborating with lawyers, and helping courts understand the social, cultural, psychological, and systemic realities affecting individuals and families.
This course helps participants develop the practical skills needed to engage more effectively in these settings.
Why This Course Matters
Social workers and human service professionals are frequently involved in matters where law, trauma, family conflict, mental health, race, gender, disability, poverty, and systemic inequality intersect. These realities are especially present in child protection, family law, criminal law, youth justice, corrections, mental health law, human rights, and community-based advocacy.
Professionals working in these settings need more than compassion and good intentions. They need practical legal literacy, strong documentation skills, ethical judgment, cultural humility, trauma-informed interviewing skills, and an understanding of how courts, lawyers, Crown attorneys, judges, expert witnesses, and service providers operate within legal processes.
This course is designed to strengthen those capacities.
Participants will explore how forensic social work practice can support more informed, fair, and justice-oriented outcomes, particularly for clients who may be marginalized by racism, colonialism, gender-based violence, poverty, disability, mental health concerns, substance use, migration status, or involvement with legal and institutional systems.
Course Description
This engaging and interactive workshop provides a practical introduction to essential legal skills for forensic social work practice. Through lectures, readings, case studies, videos, reflective exercises, and hands-on skill-building activities, participants will develop greater confidence in working with clients and professionals within the legal system.
The course emphasizes core competencies for forensic social work, including anti-oppressive practice, cultural competence and humility, trauma-informed approaches, critical thinking, ethical decision-making, interprofessional collaboration, and professional accountability.
Participants will work through a continuing case study across the four weekly modules. Through this case-based approach, learners will practice skills such as affidavit writing, forensic interviewing through a cultural and trauma-informed lens, reviewing and critiquing cross-examination of expert evidence, preparing for court, and understanding the role of expert testimony.
By the end of the course, participants will have been introduced to realistic, practice-based tools that can improve courtroom readiness, legal documentation, client advocacy, and professional confidence in justice-related settings.
Learning Goals and Objectives
This course introduces participants to forensic social work practice from a skill-based social-legal perspective. It is grounded in the values of social work, including dignity, self-determination, social justice, professional integrity, cultural humility, and ethical responsibility.
By the end of the four-week workshop, participants will have increased their understanding of:
- Core competencies for forensic social work practice
- The role of social workers in legal and quasi-legal settings
- How social work values and legal systems intersect
- Interprofessional collaboration with lawyers and other justice professionals
- Ethical issues that may arise in shared social-legal practice environments
- The importance of trauma-informed and culturally responsive practice in legal settings
- The impact of race, culture, gender, disability, poverty, and systemic inequity on legal outcomes
- Courtroom processes, legal documentation, and evidence preparation
- The role of expert evidence and expert testimony
- Practical strategies for improving confidence and professionalism in justice-related practice
Course Modules
Module 1: Core Competencies for Forensic Social Work Practice
This module focuses on the foundational competencies required for forensic social work practice. Participants will explore the importance of critical thinking, cultural humility, anti-oppressive practice, unconscious bias awareness, and trauma-informed forensic interviewing.
Learners will examine how social location, including race, culture, gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation, disability, class, immigration status, and experiences of trauma, may shape a client鈥檚 interaction with legal systems.
Participants will consider how to work ethically and effectively with diverse populations involved in criminal, family, child protection, mental health, corrections, and human rights matters.
Module 2: Collaborative Interprofessional Practice
This module examines best practices for working in collaborative social-legal environments. Participants will explore how social workers, lawyers, legal navigators, clinicians, community advocates, and justice professionals can work together while maintaining professional boundaries and ethical clarity.
Special attention will be given to standards of practice, professional codes of ethics, confidentiality, liability issues, competing professional obligations, and the tensions that may arise when social work values and legal processes intersect.
Participants will develop a stronger understanding of how to collaborate effectively while protecting client rights, professional integrity, and ethical practice.
Module 3: Evidence for the Court
This module introduces participants to the role of evidence, documentation, and written materials in legal proceedings. Participants will develop awareness of court-related documents and practice skills connected to affidavit writing, file organization, and preparation of records for legal use.
Learners will also be introduced to related forensic and legal tools, including parenting and custody assessments, cultural plans, Voice of the Child Reports, business records, and other forms of documentation that may be relevant in legal proceedings.
This module emphasizes the importance of clear, accurate, objective, culturally responsive, and professionally defensible writing in forensic social work practice.
Module 4: You as the Expert
This module prepares participants to better understand their potential role as experts or professional witnesses in legal settings. Participants will explore courtroom etiquette, preparation for testimony, presentation of reports, cross-examination, and the ethical responsibilities involved in providing opinion evidence.
Learners will consider how to remain professional, grounded, and credible when presenting information in court. This module also supports participants in developing confidence when communicating with lawyers, judges, Crown attorneys, and other legal professionals.
Target Audience
This advanced course is designed for social workers, forensic social work practitioners, human service professionals, justice and legal navigators, health professionals, community advocates, and allied practitioners who already understand that social work and law frequently intersect 鈥� and who are now ready to build the practical skills required to work more confidently in legal and court-connected settings.
This course is especially relevant for professionals who may be asked to prepare or contribute to court-related documents, organize records for legal use, participate in case conferences, support clients involved in litigation, collaborate with lawyers, or provide information that may be relied upon in court, tribunal, child protection, family law, criminal justice, corrections, mental health, or human rights matters.
Participants will benefit from this course if they want to strengthen their ability to understand court procedures, prepare legally relevant documentation, write with greater clarity and objectivity, and appreciate how affidavits, reports, business records, assessments, and other documents may be scrutinized in legal proceedings. The course is also well-suited for professionals who may be called upon to testify, present professional opinions, respond to cross-examination, or understand what it means to be positioned as an expert or professional witness in court-connected matters.
This course is designed for learners who want to move beyond general legal awareness and develop more advanced practice confidence in forensic interviewing, legal documentation, courtroom preparation, interprofessional collaboration, ethical decision-making, and communicating effectively with lawyers, judges, Crown attorneys, and other justice-system professionals.
Prerequisite Requirements
FSW1: Foundational Law for Social Work and Human Service Practice in Canada is not a required prerequisite; however, it is strongly recommended for participants who would benefit from a stronger grounding in Canadian legal systems, court structures, and the broader relationship between social work and law before moving into advanced forensic skills. This Level 2 course is best suited for those ready to enhance their legal-practice toolkit and prepare for the realities of court-involved social work practice.
What Participants Will Gain
By the end of this course, participants will have strengthened their practical knowledge, legal awareness, and confidence as emerging forensic social work practitioners.
Participants will gain:
- A clearer understanding of forensic social work practice in Canadian legal systems
- Practical skills in legal documentation and affidavit writing
- Greater awareness of court processes and courtroom expectations
- Stronger understanding of expert evidence and professional testimony
- Tools for trauma-informed and culturally responsive forensic interviewing
- Insight into ethical issues in social-legal practice
- Greater confidence in collaborating with legal professionals
- A stronger foundation for working in child protection, family law, criminal justice, youth justice, corrections, forensic mental health, and human rights settings
Format
This course is delivered online over four weekly modules. Each module requires approximately three to four hours of online work.
Participants are required to complete all four modules and a skill-building exercise. The course includes readings, videos, interactive activities, case-based exercises, reflective discussion, and practical assignments designed to support applied learning.
There are no scheduled live lecture times. The course site is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, allowing participants to complete the course at a time that works for their schedule.
Basic computer and internet skills are required to watch videos, complete activities, post comments or reflections, and navigate the online course platform.
This course requires approximately 16 hours of online study and provides 16 continuing education credit hours.
What You Will Gain
Participants will leave this course with practical, court-connected skills that can be applied directly in forensic social work, human service, and justice-related settings. The focus is on building confidence in the kinds of tasks professionals are often expected to perform, but may not have been formally taught.
You will strengthen your ability to prepare and review court-related documents, organize records for legal use, understand courtroom procedures, communicate effectively with lawyers and other justice professionals, and approach forensic interviewing with greater skill, cultural humility, and trauma-informed awareness.
The course also supports learners in understanding what it means to contribute to court matters as a professional or expert witness, including how to present information clearly, maintain objectivity, respond to questioning, and protect the integrity of your role.
By the end of the course, participants will have a stronger practical toolkit for working in legal and court-connected environments with greater confidence, professionalism, and ethical clarity.
Completion Requirements
Participants must complete a minimum of 80% of the course content to receive a Certificate of Completion from the National Institute of Forensic Social Work.
Closing Statement
FSW Level 2 is designed for learners who are ready to move beyond foundational legal awareness and begin developing the practical skills required for forensic social work practice.
This course offers a meaningful opportunity to strengthen your confidence, deepen your understanding of social-legal practice, and develop skills that are relevant to real-world work in courts, legal systems, community settings, forensic environments, and interdisciplinary practice.
For social workers and human service professionals seeking to expand their role in justice-related settings, this course provides a strong, practical, and professionally grounded next step.
16 continuing education credit hours.
Enrolment is limited to 35 participants.
| FORENSIC SOCIAL WORK 2 | 听 |
|---|---|
| Early registration (paid on or before March 1, 2027) | $460 |
| Regular registration (paid after March 1, 2027) | $495 |
| 听 | 听 |
| FALL/WINTER 26/27 COURSE SCHEDULE | 听 |