Whiting & Birch (E-Journals)
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The reform of social work practice education and training and supporting practice educators
Get PDFThe BA (Hons) Social Work Programme at University Campus Suffolk (UCS) has just completed a full academic year embedding the new Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) produced by The College of Social Work (TCSW, 2012) and the Standards of Proficiency for Social Work (SoPS) (Health and Care Professionals Council, HCPC, 2012). UCS fully began this process a year ahead of the mandatory requirement for all Higher Education Institutions (HEIs) to introduce these in time for the 2013 -2014 academic year. The new regulatory frameworks were incorporated into the programme to allow an evaluative implementation pilot year and an opportunity for review. This study will set the scene for the important role that practice educators play in social work training and education within the context of recent developments. Despite the disruption created by revision to the teaching and learning on the programme, practice placements and additional training and support required for the social work academics feedback from practice educators and students suggests that the transition was a success. It will also highlight the benefits of the new frameworks in relation to the training and support that was provided, the need for the on-going training and support for practice educators as well as considering lessons to be learned and revisions needed for the next academic year
Partnership working between young carers project and social services
Get PDFThis article draws on in-depth qualitative interviews with ten practitioners who specialise in working with young carers, to examine how members of the emerging profession of ‘young carers’ worker’ view their partnerships with social services. It focuses particularly on one case study area (Town Z), where partnerships between social services and the voluntary sector around young carers were relatively highly developed. It explores the practitioners’ comments about the impact of their organisations’ partnerships with social services on their work. This is done in the context of their conceptualisations of care and family relationships. In particular, the themes of identifying young carers and working with the family as a whole are discussed, and young carers’ workers views are compared to the conceptualisations that come across in literature from both disability studies and social work perspectives. It is concluded that young carers’ workers conceptualisations of care and disability do differ markedly from the perspectives that appear to dominate both social work theory and practice, and that this impacting on how the former view their partnerships with the latter
Assessing the impact and implications for social workers of an innovative children’s services programme aimed to support workforce reform and integrated working
Get PDFThis article reports findings from an independent audit and evaluation of an innovative children's services programme (CSP) funded 2009-2011 by twelve Local Authorities under the auspices of the North-East of England's Improvement & Efficiency Partnership (NEIEP) to manage improvements and efficiencies across the children's services sector focusing upon messages for social workers. The overall purpose of the CSP was to make demonstrable progress in tackling the challenges of child poverty by delivering high quality support to the growing number of children with social care/health needs through regional improvement. The key objectives of the CSP included supporting workforce reform and integrated working; development of personalised services; family support to reduce the need for residential care; and provision of tools to aid commissioners with needs analysis. The audit identified key outputs, for example, improvements to best practice on Whole Family approaches, safeguarding and leadership training evolved through a skills framework; and included a regional model of social work supervision training along with a provision of options to increase the range and quality of foster care placements. The evaluation considered actions arising from the above findings, including demonstrated improvements to inter-disciplinary working and pooling resources to produce better outcomes for families; setting up a data-base to improve the balance between fostering, residential care and family support; and creating opportunities for social workers to explore the practical implementation of using personal budgets
Participation and coping
Get PDFWhat implications might an understanding of a mutual dependence between the concepts of participation and coping have for professional engagement with service users? This article presents why participation is central to peoples’ lives and how service user coping with and personal participating in everyday life might be understood. Service users have access to personal and environmental resources and want to manage their everyday life as much as possible. To be able to cope they have to participate. An analytical framework was developed as a result of a study based on qualitative interviews with service users in Norway. A framework was constructed to explore how the service users participated and coped with their everyday life – both on an individual level and through interactions with their environment. This framework emerged from preliminary analysis and was then used in further analysis of the data. The study showed that professionals would be advised to build on the participation and coping that service users had established in their daily life as citizens as well as people using social services. Some service users expressed that the more social contexts they participated in, the better they experienced their coping
Developing a White anti-racism identity
Get PDFThis paper describes and assesses a seven session psycho-educational group on anti-racism identity development for White European-American undergraduate students at a midwestern U.S. university. It is predicated on the premise that Whiteness can simultaneously privilege and harm White people, and that White students have the potential to become personally invested in the challenging of systematic racism. It is also based on the idea that a group structure presents an ideal format for addressing this topic. Peer support, a safe environment, and information are requisites for facilitating personal exploration of this sensitive subject. A group model for addressing this topic is presented and assessed. Key considerations, essential elements, strengths and weaknesses, suggestions for replication and further research are discussed
Postgraduate students learning about research
Get PDFInitial findings from a pedagogic initiative and research project show how two cohorts comprising 105 postgraduates undertaking social work or mental health educational programmes responded to learning about research methods in one UK university. Few studies have looked specifically at postgraduate students’ attitudes towards research / research methods. Previous research suggests students may express anxiety when learning about research, particularly quantitative methods. Using an existing validated rating scale with 5 subscales (Papanastasiou, 2005), we explored students’ attitudes before and after taking a research module and possible significance of gender, professional group and being college or employment based. Project data was used by students to complete a quantitative module assignment. Results showed these students had a ‘positive’ attitude towards research pre-module; this was generally maintained but did not increase post-module. Students were rated as having overall research ‘anxiety’ pre-module; this lessened post-module although the change was not statistically significant. A significant change (decrease) in ‘usefulness to career’ subscale was recorded post-module. We consider factors that could have impacted on these research findings such as reduced follow up sample sizes, but report how combining a pedagogic initiative with a research project offers opportunities to explore this complex area, with positive outcomes for student learning