Archive

Letter from Norway.

Gro Wilhelmsen reports from Stavanger, where the welfare system is supplemented by a volunteer scheme that provides extra support for users and experience for social work students

Stavanger, the fourth biggest town in Norway, is the country's petroleum centre and has an international flavour, which is reflected in its French and English schools.

In our social work education department at the university college we have 300 students studying full time for three years, with each student spending 22 weeks of their course in the field.

Sometimes it is difficult to find placements for all of our 100 students each year, so in 1995 the Institute for Social Work Education started its own welfare office, "independent social counselling" (ISC), providing support and counselling for everyone in the town needing help. This is a student-run service provided by 15 students working full-time in the spring semester. The same number work during the summer holiday and voluntarily in the evenings during the autumn semester.

Stavanger's ISC was the first of its kind in Norway, and now Oslo, Bergen and Bod¿ have established similar offices where students can gain this alternative practice during their education.

The ISC is a supplement to the ordinary social welfare offices in the town and provides no financial help for users or the clients. It is meant to provide alternative training for the students to use their own initiative in practising social work. Students are able to be more flexible in meeting with users and clients than is possible in an ordinary office.

During these 22 weeks the students learn a lot about teamwork and the overall social system. A teacher in social work meets the students each week to counsel them in personal and professional matters connected to the work.

The office is in the centre of the town and provides easy access for people needing help and advice. In 1999, 74 people contacted ISC. The users and clients of ISC are from a variety of backgrounds and they have many different kinds of problems and questions. Many of them have not managed to get help from the conventional channels and have needed support to find the correct way through the complicated modern welfare system.

According to Liv Schjeldrup and Cecilie Omre, who are the pioneer teachers at ISC, the most important elements offered by ISC are time and competence training. In the beginning the statutory social welfare offices were sceptical of the service, but now they actively seek help from the students. The teachers point out the importance of the scheme in educating reflective and ethically conscious social workers.

This kind of work also strengthens the students' personal development, as they build up their responsibility, action-ability, self-confidence and creativity. The students work on their own and have to rely on their ability to cope with the complicated problems that arise daily. More often the students are playing mediators between the user and the social welfare office.

The university college uses a lot of resources on this project, with two or three teachers involved part-time in ISC at any one time. Quite often former students with ISC experience who have finished their courses work as assistants on the scheme.

We believe the project is a useful source of experience for students and that users have gained support from social workers who, for once, can give them lots of time.

Gro Wilhelmsen is assistant professor, Stavanger University College.

Background

- Norway (Norge) covers 325,000 sq km, which is slightly more than 1.3 times the size of the UK, although the population of nearly 4.5 million is less than one-tenth the size of the UK.

- Ethnic groups: indigenous Norwegian (Nordic, Alpine, Baltic) and about 0.5 per cent Lapps (Sami).

- Stavanger, Norway's "largest small town", has a population of 110,000 and is situated in the southwest towards the North Sea. It has an unusually high number - 7 per cent - of inhabitants born outside of Norway. It was a canning and fishing town before it became the oil capital of Norway. Spending on health and social services is NOK 1,236m - just under one-third of Stavanger's budget.