College Diploma - Human Services - Social Service Worker

The College Diploma - Human Services - Social Service Worker at Selkirk College’s Castlegar campus is a 1 year college diploma including a practicum an accelerated one-year diploma preparing front-line social service workers.

Building on the social service worker certificate foundation, students study human development, counselling skills, community resources, mental health and addictions support, and apply it in a supervised practicum with regional agencies. The compressed format turns a certificate-level start into a diploma credential in a single year.

Selkirk College, founded in 1966 as British Columbia’s first regional community college, is a fully public institution in the province’s West Kootenay region. The 65-hectare forested Castlegar campus offers genuinely small classes, on-campus student housing, and some of the lowest combined tuition-and-living costs of any BC public college. University courses transfer to UBC, SFU, UVic and other BC universities through the province’s formal transfer system, and graduates working in the region can pursue the BC Provincial Nominee Program toward permanent residence.

This program is registered in the field of CIP 44.0701 (Social work, general (verify registered CIP)) and is offered to international students under Canada’s post-November-2024 PGWP field-of-study rules; two-year programs support a Post-Graduation Work Permit of up to three years. Selkirk College maintains a live list of PGWP-eligible programs and seat availability changes by intake — verify this program on the official list and with IRCC before applying (final decisions rest with IRCC).