Professional writing course helps Social Welfare students enhance evergreen skills

Social work is a profession that requires consistent and effective communication with a variety of audiences. That’s a major reason why SW 410 Professional Writing Skills in Social Work is offered at the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare. 

The course helps students learn the principles of organizing, developing, writing and revising documentation for different professional social work settings.

Joe Bush, professional writing consultant and adjunct instructor for the KU School of Social Welfare, is teaching SW 410 this spring. Bush worked with the Bachelor of Social Work curriculum committee to update and modernize the course.

Bush was excited to help students develop the evergreen skills that come with writing prowess. 

“You have so many different audiences you need to communicate with, and they're going to react in different ways to different methods of communication or different styles of writing,” said Bush, who joined the school in March 2022. 

Bush is in his first semester teaching the course at KU, and said he is encouraged by how his students have taken to the content. The lessons are based on realistic scenarios and group work that allow the students to engage with one another. 

Social workers will be in settings ranging from mental health facilities and the justice system to schools, hospitals and youth homes. The profession is diverse and challenging. Bush wants to help students prepare for the range of communication skills that will be needed. 

The course covers the basics of building sentences, word choice and crafting paragraphs. Bush also gets into rhetorical ideas and writing for specific audiences. 

The professional writing skills course is one of several electives added to the KU BSW program in recent years. Other lower-level courses cover ethics for caring professions, preventing sexual violence in campus communities, and environmental justice and eco-social work.

He said students responded well during the first six weeks of the course in the spring 2026 semester. One Social Welfare student, Rose Lee, said she enjoys the group work and assignments that present new challenges.

“Our most recent assignment was to write a social history document about a case. Everyone had the same case, but we all wrote the social history document differently. It not only made us reflect on our own writings, but it helped us brainstorm a better way to write a client's social history,” Lee said. “Overall, this class has helped me hone my writing skills and has broadened my writing style.”

Bush comes from a writing background and said he wanted to make sure students also hear from social workers during the course. Practicing social workers visit the class to share their experiences with students.

No matter what area of social work future graduates choose to explore, Bush wants these skills to be impactful. 

“I think the benefits extend to social work, school and outside of social work as well,” Bush said. “I'd like to think of writing as the place where you can really drill down and practice that.”