Delivering Financial Capability and Asset Building Curriculum: Strengthening the Competencies of Social Work Faculty

The promotion of financial capability and asset building (FCAB) in Africa is an essential professional activity for social work to promote the socioeconomic well-being of individuals, families, groups, and communities. Yet, in many sub-Saharan African countries including Ghana, social work students are not adequately prepared academically and professionally with financial-related tools to assist their clients in that area of practice. Therefore, there is a need to integrate FCAB into the social work curriculum at universities in this region. This paper focuses on training of social work faculty members as the first step towards incorporating FCAB content in the curriculum. Building the capacity of faculty would enable them to gain confidence in teaching FCAB and become familiar with the (a) different ways that FCAB could be integrated into social work curriculum, (b) educational opportunities, and (c) curricular resources and ideas for infusing FCAB content into existing curriculum. Such curricular innovations would empower faculty to offer students the opportunity to develop a deep and better understanding of environmental risks that affect the financial health of low-income individuals, families, groups, and communities as well as resources endeared to the building of FCAB. Faculty capacity enhancement in FCAB could positively spillover to improve the financial knowledge of social work practitioners and clients.