Service user involvement in social work training in England remains “patchy” despite it being a requirement of the degree, according to a study by the Social Care Institute for Excellence.
SCIE wrote to 1,300 service users and their organisations and emailed 300 service user-controlled organisations to ask if they were involved in social work education and training.
SCIE found a large percentage of service user organisations would like to be involved in education but are not, and an equally high percentage of those that are involved would like to be more involved.
Barriers to service user involvement included inadequate training, negative attitudes and assumptions made by students and staff and the time it took to reimburse expenses.
According to the Department of Health’s requirements for social work training, service users should be involved in all aspects of the design and delivery of programmes.
SCIE has produced a good practice guide for universities and service user organisations in this area, which is available here.
http://www.whysocialwork.blogspot.com/
SCIE has been funded by the Department of Health to implement action plans to support service user and carer participation in social work education. Recognising that service user and carer controlled organisations should lead this work Shaping Our Lives, the national user controlled network and organisation is working in partnership with SCIE and with a carers organisation based at the university of Sussex.
The project involves creating a national forum for service users and carers in social work education, promoting the exchange of good practice, and testing out how service user and carer groups experienced in social work education can support the involvement of seldom heard groups, thereby widening participation.
SCIE’s role is to provide resources and support, and to promote links with other key stakeholders. The event reported here was developed and planned by members of the national forum, Shaping Our Lives and Sussex University Carer’s group. Two reports were launched; one from a service user perspective which built on earlier work by Shaping Our Lives (2005) and explored with service users he development of service user involvement in social work education (SCIE 2009), and the other from a carers perspective. In addition the national forum over saw the development of a web tool that was launched at this event. The web too is designed to support and promote good practice in involving service users and carers in social work education. The reports produced by Shaping Our Lives for this on going project can be downloaded from our website at http://www.shapingourlives.org.uk
Dr. Fran Branfield
Director
Shaping Our Lives