The Voice Up 8-Week Guide
Personalized Planning & Readiness Guide with Integrated Social Worker Mentoring Sessions
Every Voice Up MSW student receives a personalized version of this guide — built around their specific project, population, and purpose. Below are two complete examples showing how the guide is adapted for entirely different focus areas. Each guide includes every component: scope clarification, pre-start steps, five principles, CSWE competency alignment, participation commitments, all 8 weeks with full activity options, mentor documentation prompts, reflection questions, and closing thoughts.
Choose your track
Every Guide Includes All of These Components
Clinical Scope & Supervision Clarification
Non-clinical scope definition, role separation, and participant safety protocol — on the first page of every guide.
Required Pre-Start Steps
Checklist students complete before beginning Week 1.
The Five Voice Up Foundation Principles
Collaboration, Humility, Precision, Patience, Empathy — the ethical framework of all work.
Why This Planning Guide Exists
Personalized core belief statement tied to the student's specific project.
CSWE Competency Alignment
All 6 CSWE competencies mapped to specific weeks with practicum portfolio documentation requirements.
Required Participation Commitments
Clear expectations for weekly activities, log submissions, waivers, and safety protocols.
8 Weeks of Structured Activities
Three activity options (A, B, C) per week — research/writing, analysis/audit, or community conversation.
60-Min Weekly Mentoring Sessions
Required every week with specific Mentor Documentation Prompts for the Weekly Log.
5 Reflection Questions Per Week
All five questions required in the Weekly Log submission every week.
Copyright Notice & Important Links
Full copyright, contact information, and important links summary at front and close of guide.
Athlete Burnout & Athletic Retirement
Focus: Sport Psychology · NCAA Mental Health · Burnout Prevention · Retirement Transition
Designed for an MSW student who is a current or former collegiate athlete. This guide centers on athlete burnout awareness and athletic retirement transition — building a Burnout Awareness Guide and Retirement Transition Toolkit grounded in sport psychology research, athlete voices, and NCAA policy analysis. The student's lived experience as an athlete is both the ethical foundation and the unique source of credibility for the work.
Core Belief
"Purpose grows through reflection, relationships, and repetition. Voice Up provides structured guidance to help you plan, document, and refine your approach to athlete burnout and athletic retirement — ensuring that the student athletes you serve have the awareness, tools, and transition support they deserve."
8 Weeks
3 activity options each week
60 Min/Week
Required mentoring + documentation
CSWE Aligned
All 6 competencies addressed
Full 8-Week Guide Content
Closing Thoughts
What you are building matters. You began this journey with something rare and powerful — a cause that is both academically rigorous and deeply personal. You have lived burnout. You are navigating retirement. You know what it costs an athlete to go through those experiences without adequate support. That is exactly why your work is needed. The burnout awareness guide and the athlete retirement transition toolkit you are building across these 8 weeks are not just academic projects. They are the resources that a version of you — earlier in your athletic career — would have needed. The Clinical Scope & Supervision Clarification integrated into this guide ensures your work is not only purposeful — it is professionally protected, ethically grounded, and aligned to every standard your practicum program requires. Voice Up is proud to walk alongside you. Keep advocating. Keep building. Keep going.
Little Minds Matter — Children's Mental Health
Focus: Children's Mental Health Destigmatization · Community Resources · School-Based Advocacy
Designed for an MSW student at Alliant University whose project — Little Minds Matter — aims to destigmatize mental health for children through community-based resources, school partnerships, and advocacy. The student's own childhood experiences with mental health provide the authentic foundation from which the guide is built, and the 8 weeks lead toward a publishable resource that children in their community will actually hold in their hands.
Core Belief
"Purpose grows through reflection, relationships, and repetition. Voice Up provides structured guidance to help you plan, document, and refine your approach to destigmatizing mental health for children — ensuring that kids who struggle in silence find the safe spaces, tools, and open conversations they deserve."
8 Weeks
3 activity options each week
60 Min/Week
Required mentoring + documentation
CSWE Aligned
All 6 competencies addressed
Full 8-Week Guide Content
Closing Thoughts
What you are building matters. You started this journey not from theory or coursework alone, but from the deepest, most honest place a social worker can begin — from your own story. A child who struggled in silence, who figured it out alone, who grew up and decided that the next generation would not have to. That is not just a program idea. That is a calling. Little Minds Matter will find its shape over these 8 weeks — and beyond them. The research you gather, the communities you listen to, the feedback you welcome with an open mind, the partnerships you build with libraries and schools — all of it adds up to something children in your community will actually hold in their hands and hearts. The Clinical Scope & Supervision Clarification integrated into this guide ensures your work is not only purposeful — it is professionally protected, ethically grounded, and aligned to every standard your Alliant University MSW First Practicum requires. Voice Up is proud to walk alongside you. Keep going.
Your Guide Is Built Around You
Every student who enters Voice Up's MSW field education program receives a version of this guide personalized to their specific project, population, and university practicum requirements. The structure — 8 weeks, 3 activity options, 60-minute mentoring sessions, CSWE competency alignment — stays the same. The content is yours.
Your Project
Athlete burnout, children's mental health, youth leadership, policy advocacy — your focus determines the weekly activities.
Your Population
Athletes, children, families, educators, communities — your audience shapes the research, conversations, and deliverables.
Your University
Your school's specific CSWE practicum requirements and field supervisor expectations are integrated throughout.
Clinical Scope Notice
All student activities in these guides fall exclusively within non-clinical categories: Education, Research, Advocacy, Resource Development, Community Conversation, and Professional Development. Voice Up does not provide clinical crisis support and is not a licensed mental health organization. All clinical oversight is the responsibility of the student's university-designated Licensed Field Supervisor.
View Full Student Scope & Mentoring Guide