Master of Social Work (MSW) in Florida

Earning a Master of Social (MSW) is the first big step toward becoming a state credentialed social worker through the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage & Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling. Whether you’re going for the Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) credential required to perform clinical diagnoses and counseling or the Certified Master Social Worker (CMSW) for macro-level work outside the clinical setting, an MSW with the right focus will get you there.

Everywhere you look in the Sunshine State, you see people having fun. Epic rides at Disney World, college kids partying on Delray Beach for Spring Break, retirees on vacation enjoying the incredible sunsets from Key West.

But social workers also see the shadowy side of the state. People sleeping on the beach not because they have a hangover, but because there’s nowhere else to go. Undocumented immigrants—around 1 million of them in Florida, according to a 2022 report from the Department of Homeland Security—working in the shade of the theme parks, trapped in abusive labor arrangements and without health or child care on account of their status. Folks who aren’t watching the sunsets because they are desperate to score a fix to feed their habit, coming to almost 3 percent of the population according to Florida Health as of 2019.

For everything that is amazing about Florida, there are challenges in keeping the population of the third largest state happy, health, and fulfilled. Those challenges are being met by MSW-prepared licensed social workers.

Why a Master of Social Work Is the Ultimate Goal for Making a Difference to Individuals and Families in Florida

There are many issues in society and culture that can bring Floridians to the brink. Many of those pitfalls have specialized degree programs dedicated to fixing them: mental health counseling, nursing, substance abuse treatment, marriage and family therapy.

And those are all important disciplines in human services, make no mistake. But all those problems have social roots. According to a 2020 report from the Florida Chamber Foundation, the three million Floridians living in poverty are often there due to lack of education, lower employment opportunities, poor transportation options, and unaffordable or unattainable child care options.

Only the science of social work brings a big-picture, multicultural, intersectional, multi-level approach to solving social problems for good.

A graduate degree in social work from a respected Florida university will help you tie together the complex threads that lead to social injustice and develop solutions for everyone.

Master of social work degrees cover the broad range of political, social, and scientific factors that contribute to misery, disease, and discontent. Exploring all the evidence and even offering original research opportunities, they are the educational programs that produce the people who do the most to help those in need.

An MSW Is Your Path To Becoming a Credentialed Social Worker in Florida

The knowledge and skills that come from those studies are important in their own right. But it’s also the case that a master’s degree is critical to earning a license or certification to practice as a social worker in Florida.

The state has two general categories of social work credential:

For both those tracks, you’ll need to make sure your program has been accredited by The Council on Social Work Education’s Board of Accreditation (CSWE).

CSWE is a specialty accreditor recognized by CHEA, the Council for Higher Education Accreditation as the final word for professional educational standards in social work. They have strong connections to the social work community, and high standards for both curriculum standards and experiential placement opportunities in social work studies.

Thirteen universities in Florida hold CSWE accreditation for their master of social work degree programs.

That’s the level of expertise in social work education that is required to make it count for licensing here.

Here you’ll find the complete list of every school in Florida offering online and campus-based CSWE-accredited Master of Social Work (MSW) programs:

Ana G. Mendez University | AGM University

Liberal Arts Division
Private University

MSW (on-campus, online)

Also Offers:

Barry University

School of Social Work
Private University

MSW (on-campus, online)

Also Offers:

Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University FAMU

College of Social Sciences Arts and Humanities, Department of Social Work
Public University

MSW (on-campus)

Southeastern University

College of Social Sciences and Humanities
Private University

MSW (on-campus)

Also Offers:

University of Central Florida

College of Health Professions and Sciences, School of Social Work
Public University

MSW (on-campus, online)

Also Offers:

BSW
Minor in Aging Studies
Aging Studies Undergraduate Certificate
Children’s Services Undergraduate Certificate
Military Social Work Graduate Certificate
Nonprofit Management Minor
Spanish for Social Work Undergraduate Certificate

Minor in Social Work
Minor in Aging Studies Interdisciplinary
Minor in Child Welfare
Minor in Substance Abuse
Minor in Social Welfare
BA in Children and Society
BSW

Advanced Coursework Designed to Prepare Florida CMSWs and LCSWs for the Challenges Ahead

Something unusual about master of social work degrees is that they are often designed to be cut in half.

Two years is the standard course of study for an MSW. If you’re coming in to the field with a major in any other kind of human services field, that’s exactly what you’ll go through:

But if you’re coming in with a BSW degree from a CSWE-accredited program, you’ve already covered the foundational topics. You are therefore eligible to move straight to your concentration year through an advanced standing master of social work degree.

Otherwise, you’ll spend that first year of studies creating a sense of the great arc of historical justice and unpacking the social issues that afflict the United States today. You will find courses with titles such as:

Human Behavior in the Social Environment
History, Philosophy, and Theory of Social Work
Evidence-Based Theories of Clinical Social Work Practice
Human Diversity and Social Justice
Ethical Issues in Contemporary Social Work

You’ll also be working on building some of the more general skills that are required in all types of social work. Those include:

And even if you’re not in an advanced standing MSW program, you will find that all of these skills balance on top of the critical bachelor’s coursework in the humanities that you have already digested. Communications skills, general knowledge of government, science, and sociology, and key critical thinking abilities will all get a workout in your MSW studies.

Finding Your MSW Specialization Means Finding Your Home as a Florida Social Worker

It’s the concentration year where you start diving into the specifics of different sorts of social work issues and how to handle them.

You will find specialization options in Florida social work schools that include:

Aging Studies
Children's Services
Military Social Work
Clinical Social Work
Social Leadership
Advocacy and Social Justice
International Social Work
Addictions
Health and Wellness
Nonprofit management
Social Welfare and Policy

Your decision here will shape your entire career. There are no restrictions on what areas you can practice in with the license you pick up after mastering any of these fields. But you had better believe that future employers will want to see a relevant MSW specialization in your background.

In a state that had, according to the Tallahassee Democrat in 2023, nearly 20,000 new Venezuelan, nearly 13,000 new Cuban, more than 6,000 Haitian, and just over 4,000 Ukrainian nationals contacted by authorities, your coursework needs to reflect the diversity you will encounter on the job.

Florida is one of the best states to study for a career in social work that involves serving the needs of Hispanic/Latino populations. You’ll find colleges here offering specific tracks designed for social workers who will primarily work in Spanish.

Coursework in these specialty fields naturally revolves around the special challenges and techniques that social workers confront and use. That can range from courses covering clinical practice in family counseling to social work leadership, management, and supervision. A balanced helping of professional practice and more general studies give you an expert set of skills and knowledge in your specialization and the field of social work overall.

Dual Degrees: When Specializations Aren’t Enough

Another way to specialize as a Florida social worker is to go even further than just picking an MSW concentration: you can get a whole second master’s degree in some specialty fields at the same time.

Many Florida colleges with social work programs also have excellent departments in other fields that are closely tied to specialty areas, like law or public administration. So it’s not unusual for MSW students to simultaneously pursue a full master’s in those fields.

This delivers more than just the handful of classes that a concentration comes with. It also can bring different perspectives and unique expertise from other professions.

The two dual-degree options at CSWE-accredited schools of social work in Florida are ideal for the work taking place on the ground here:

MSW / JD (Juris Doctor) – A full law degree creates formidable social work advocates who can pursue social justice in court as well as on the streets.
MSW / MPH (Master of Public Health) – An MPH is a solid investment for social workers dealing with health and safety issues like substance use disorders, the health insurance system, or elder care.

Even in the most jam-packed concentration, you’ll usually have openings for a handful of elective class choices. You can use these to double down on your specialization field, like loading up a class in Child Abuse Treatment and Prevention on top of your child welfare studies. But you can also use it to broaden your skillset in other ways, like taking a class in Documentation Skills for Helping Professionals to shore up your paperwork prowess, or Behavioral Health Skills for Clinical Social Workers to hone your therapy skills.

Hands-on Practice in Florida Social Services Is a Critical Part of Master of Social Work Programs

MSW degrees are about more than packing your head with theory, though. Any CSWE-accredited program will also make sure you get plenty of time to take that theory into hands-on territory through practical field experiences.

Practicum courses will probably be your first taste of this real-world training. These are typically short placements that are tightly tied to your college coursework. You work only under close supervision, and often with specific learning objectives. The placement is often mirrored by a seminar course at your school where you will discuss your field experience with a professor and see how it integrates with your classroom work.

Practicum placements are very school specific. At the University of South Florida, for example, you will have to put in 900 total hours, at 20 hours per week for three semesters. Your experiences will all be at a single large agency or organization. At Florida State University, on the other hand, only around 650 hours are required.

Most MSW degrees also offer lengthier and more involved internship opportunities, as well. An internship sees you more integrated with the daily operations at your placement and often comes with greater duties and responsibilities. Most of your instruction will come from staff on the job, and less from your instructors.

An internship offers a preview of what your life as a social worker might be like.

In both cases, you’ll find that schools try to align your practical experience with your concentration area. If you’re specializing in child welfare, for example, you may be placed at a child and family services nonprofit or child welfare agency… probably not at a state prison or nursing home.

Drawing from Barry University’s list of MSW clinical field placement partnerships, that fieldwork can drop you into organizations like:

New Horizons of the Treasure Coast
Miami Jewish Healthcare Center
Broward Healthcare
Nicklaus Children’s Hospital
Guitars Over Guns
Florida Department of Children and Families

What you come out of these placements with is not just reinforcement for your classroom studies, though you’ll get that too. More importantly, though, it’s real connections and real experiences with Floridians in need—and the growing understanding that what you are learning really is helping them.

Are Online Master of Social Work Programs a Good Option in Florida?

Many MSW candidates find that online degree programs are a great fit both for where they are in life and where they want to go.

A typical grad student is older and has more responsibilities and obligations than the typical student. You may have a family you are providing for. You might have gone out into the job market right after earning your bachelors, and have a secure position and career to maintain. Or you may simply have put down roots in your neighborhood and don’t want to pull up and relocate for two years to go to school.

Online MSW programs may be offered in full-time or part-time tracks, just like traditional MSW studies.

Online programs take all those concerns off the table. They are typically offered asynchronously, which means you can stream lectures, correspond with classmates, or conduct research on your own schedule.

They allow you to stick close to home, avoiding the expense of relocating to be near a good graduate program.

And since you can pick from any school in the state, or even beyond, they really open up your choices to find programs that deliver the exact education you want, in the specialty you are most interested in.

There are six online MSW programs currently offered by Florida social work schools:

Florida State University
University of Central Florida
University of West Florida
University of South Florida
Barry University
Ana G. Mendez University

They aren’t just for Florida students, either; FSU, for instance, has strong field placement relationships with social service agencies and non-profits across the country. That lets you get your critical field experience close to home, even if your lectures are happening in another time zone.

The Right Master’s Degree Opens up Every Kind of Social Work Job in Florida

A master’s degree is the ticket to just about any sort of social work job that you can find in the state of Florida.

That’s because the MSW is a requirement for both the Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) and Certified Master Social Worker (CMSW) credentials offered by the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage & Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling.

Getting the Right Kind of MSW For the Florida State Credential You Might be Planning to Pursue

While both the LCSW and the CMSW in Florida require an MSW, they each have unique sets of coursework that the Florida Board of Clinical Social Work, Marriage and Family Therapy and Mental Health Counseling wants to see on your transcript.

For the LCSW, naturally, that means extensive clinical therapy training—at least 24 semester hours of theories of human behavior and practice methods in clinically-oriented services. It has to come with at least one class in psychopathology, as well.
CMSW candidates need to ensure their MSW comes with at least 3 semester hours of coursework in agency administration and supervision, program planning and evaluation, staff development, community organization and services, research, social planning, and human services advocacy.

While it’s possible to double up and get all of the required classes for either license squeezed into a single MSW, you’ll also find that Florida universities offer degrees that are optimized for either credential out of the box.

Most Florida social work schools offer a clinical concentration that fits the LCSW path nicely. In some cases, that’s the default. Others, like FSU, offer a Social Leadership concentration that is aimed at policy and administration work, rather than a clinical focus.These concentrations not only shift your coursework into the appropriate lane, but will also align your practicum and field experiences with the type of practice you are heading toward in your career.

Finally, two schools, Florida A&M and the University of North Florida, have MSW programs that are entirely aimed at macro practice and social services administration. These won’t meet the clinical training standards of the LCSW, but are a perfect fit for CMSW-bound students.

Those are the key to clinical (LCSW) and administrative or macro (CMSW) positions throughout the state.

Of course, you’re not required to stay in those lanes just because you chose to earn an MSW. There are plenty of people who find that the expanded social consciousness and skillsets that come with an MSW qualification takes them on a path to other callings to increase social justice.

From Financial Gurus to Literary Icons - How MSW Grads Have Gone on To Do Great Things for Society Beyond the Field of Social Work

You can’t get through a master of social work degree without unlocking a profound sense of social consciousness deep within. It’s inevitable that your studies of history, injustice, and inequality will lead to larger questions about why things are the way they are.

While many social workers take that motivation and engage in lobbying and direct action to champion the issues they are most passionate about, there are others who decide that the real solutions require even more leverage.

That’s why you see social workers like Sylvia Garcia of Texas or Krysten Sinema of Florida running for office and working to end social ills at the highest levels of government.

Others, like Suze Orman, take a more commercial path to helping people. Orman built a background in finance on top of her social work degree and took to the air on CNBC and published books helping Americans take better care of their finances. Alice Walker built on her studies and activism in Civil Rights by writing The Color Purple, which may have done as much for Black culture in America as decades of marching.

The combination of high-level communication and creative problem solving skills that come with an MSW will give you the tools to get off the beaten path and take your own route to social justice too, if you choose.

Assuming you stick with roles that require an LCSW/CMSW, you are still looking at an enormously diverse range of job options. Florida social workers are crucial in managing everything from the homelessness crisis to substance use disorders to protecting immigrants from harsh state crackdowns.

You’ll find that these roles are mixed together in all sorts of agencies and organizations. At the Children’s Home Society of Florida, for instance, there are LCSWs who work as clinical counselors while other MSW grads serve as program managers at the Western Florida Healthy Families Program.

Each of those jobs comes with a different flavor of daily activities and range of responsibilities. But there are certain things you can count on applying in any sort of social work job you might come across in Florida:

Assessing the needs of individuals or communities experiencing crisis or social injustice
Developing plans and identifying resources to address the cause of those problems
Intervening through direct action, referral, or advocacy to get help for your clients and their communities
Keeping accurate records and information regarding both their needs and your services
Keeping tabs on the progress of recovery plans and adjusting as needed for the best outcome

Across that range, you’ll find jobs that keep you mostly out on the streets, working directly with individuals. There will be other positions where you spend most of your time in an office, managing the response and helping to direct plans and personnel. And still others will find you making the rounds in Tallahassee, attending national conferences, or even booking it up to Washington D.C. to find ways to unlock more resources and assistance.

However you choose to make a difference in Florida and in the United States, you’ll find that difference is bigger with the leverage of an MSW to apply to the problems.