BSW, MSW, SSW...What do all these letters mean?
SSW: Social Service Worker. This is a 2-year college diploma. Social Service Workers must register with the Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers (OCSWSSW), and they tend to focus on tangible forms of support for clients (such as helping to navigate housing systems or social assistance). Social service workers often work in group homes, shelters, and other frontline services. Social service workers registered with the OCSWSSW are sometimes referred to as RSSW, and are legally allowed to provide psychotherapy and use the title of psychotherapist as long as they meet the criteria set out by the OCSWSSW. Usually, if a Social Service Worker is providing psychotherapy, it means they have significant life and/or professional experience and have taken additional trainings beyond their diploma program.
BSW: Bachelor of Social Work. This is an undergraduate university degree. Social workers do similar things as social service workers, but they can generally work in a wider variety of health and social settings, including hospitals and social service agencies. If registered with the OCSWSSW, BSW graduates can legally call themselves "social workers" or may use the abbreviaton "RSW" beside their name. RSW can also provide psychotherapy and use the title of psychotherapist, again as long as they meet the required criteria. BSW students often have less experience than MSW students, and this is often their first experience working in the field.
MSW: Master of Social Work. This is a graduate degree, meaning that you have to have either a university degree or a combination of education and life experience that approximately equals a university degree. MSW graduates often work in instutional settings like schools, as well as in fields like child welfare and in private practice. MSW students usually have some work and/or lived experience providing counselling or support. MSW graduates can register with the OCSWSSW and use the abbreviation RSW. They can provide psychotherapy and use the title psychotherapist, providing they meet the requirements.
MACP: Masters of Arts in Counselling Psychology. This is a graduate degree, which usually means you need a previous university degree, or a combination of education and life experience that equals a university degree. MACP programs usually focus on psychotherapy techniques and graduates of these programs often become registered psychotherapists through the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO). MACP students' placements are more focused on direct client interaction, whereas SSW/BSW/MSW students' placements tend to look at more macro-level things like social oppression, the impacts of systems, and social policy.
MS in Psychotherapy: Some schools offer a Masters of Science degree with a focus on psychotherapy. This is a graduate degree, usually requiring a previous university degree but also possibly a combination of past education and life experience equivalent to a degree. This type of program is similar to the MACP program in its focus on learning psychotherapy techniques, and therefore has a similar placement focus on direct client interaction and practice providing counselling.
Social Work vs Psychotherapy?
Psychotherapy is sometimes called "talk therapy". In Ontario, psychotherapy is a controlled act that only certain professionals are legally allowed to provide. Psychotherapy is defined as "treating, by means of psychotherapy technique, delivered through a therapeutic relationship, an individual’s serious disorder of thought, cognition, mood, emotional regulation, perception or memory that may seriously impair the individual’s judgement, insight, behaviour, communication or social functioning" - which we recognize is a fairly vague definition.
The CRPO breaks it down more in this handy info sheet. If a person has a 'serious disorder of thought, cognition, mood, emotional regulation, perception, or memory', that seriously impairs 'judgment, insight, behaviour, communication, or social functioning', and a person helps address that by forming a therapeutic relationship and using psychotherapy techniques, it is considered psychotherapy.
For example, if someone posts on an online forum that they are suffering from depression and they don't spend time with friends anymore, they are expressing a 'serious disorder of mood' that 'impairs social functioning'. If someone comments on that forum post and says, "hey, you should try deep breathing", this is not psychotherapy, because the commenter is not forming a therapeutic relationship and is not using psychotherapy techniques ('deep breathing' is not specifically a psychotherapy technique).
However, if someone brings their dog to the vet and mentions, "my social anxiety is so severe that I can't answer the phone anymore and it's ruining my life", and the vet responds by walking the client through a cognitive behavioural therapy exercise to try and improve their anxiety, this would be considered psychotherapy, and isn't legally allowed because a veterinarian is not legally allowed to provide psychotherapy.
In Ontario, members of 6 regulatory colleges can perform psychotherapy. This includes Registered Psychotherapists, as well as people registered with the College of Psychologists of Ontario, Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Service Workers, College of Nurses of Ontario, College of Occupational Therapists of Ontario, and College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario. It's also extremely important to know that not everyone registered with these colleges is qualified to perform psychotherapy. It is each practitioner's responsibility to understand their level of skill and knowledge, and to not try to deliver psychotherapy in areas they aren't properly trained and qualified.
Social Work is a broader category that includes working with individuals, communities, and systems to navigate barriers from personal circumstances up to structural oppression. This can include a huge range of activities - social workers in hospitals help patients and their families to process hard news and plan for the support needs of patients leaving hospitals, social workers in schools work with students who are struggling emotionally or who are missing a lot of school (among many other things!). There are also social workers who help create policy and try to address inequality and oppression from that level. Some social workers provide coaching or counselling, while others may provide psychotherapy services.
The History of Social Work in Canada is Dark
There's an elephant in the room, and it's the history of social work in Canada. The field of social work in Canada developed as a form of colonialism by white settlers. The very first social workers were Christian missionaries who were given the responsibility of 'dealing with' the Indigenous peoples displaced by settlers. Eventually this role expanded to include the task of 'civilizing' Indigenous communities. Social benefits were used as a coercive tool to get Indigenous people to obey settler rules and policies, including genocidal legislation intended to destroy Indigenous languages, communities, traditions, and history. Early social work in Canada was inherently colonialist and white supremacist, with an emphasis on trying to make Indigenous peoples 'assimilate' into settler culture. Over time the role of the social worker expanded and changed, but social workers continued to play a huge role in the cultural genocide of Canada's Indigenous peoples.
In the 1960s, about 20 000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and communities as part of what has come to be known as the 'Sixties Scoop'. These children were placed with settler families or sent to Residential schools, where they were forced to speak English, practice settler spiritual and religious traditions, and many were horrifically abused. Even today, Indigenous children are disproportionately represented in the child welfare system and Indigenous adults are disproportionately represented in imprisonment rates in Canada. Social workers have been an integral part of a generations-long cultural genocide - many of them doing so with the best of intentions.