I am hoping to develop a specific student zone on www.communitycare.co.uk for people training to be a social worker. What sort of information would you find useful in this area?

 How about a guide to the various courses available and the places you can go to study? In my day, you would have needed to provide a guide to which student union sold the cheapest beer but nowadays the students would be more interested in learning packages, placement qualifications and career prospect analysis or something.

Surely not!  Students are students whether they're studying social work or french.  It's all about the socialising, no?

I wondered if people might be interested in reading about what prospective employers may offer in terms of golden hellos, cars etc for newly qualified staff?

I would certainly have wanted that information! It was really hard to find, especially for the North of England.

Perhaps also a guide to interview structures and the types of tasks they will be expected to perform.

 Thanks for your comments Ms Brown - I think those are exactly the sort of things we need to be covering in our new Student Zone

Do it please!!! xx

Thanks for your comment Sunshine - we intend to get going with this asap. Maybe you could help me - do you know if there are specific student fayres for just social work students? My colleague Simeon and I were thinking of attending a few this year to spread the word about Carespace.

Of course I don't mind, keep me posted. I'm a newbie so and dont start the degree til next yr. As a mature student however a forum like the studentnurse.uk.org is really good so something similar maybe. x

I think this is a great idea. I have just finished the second year of the degree course and have started browsing through jobs. Many jobs ask for placement experience in a relevant area, it would be useful to have an awareness of this from the start. However as student rep for my year I have found that placements, or rather lack of good quality placements, are a significant issue for many students. Information regarding what to expect and how to get the most from a placement would be very useful. Also some impartial advice regarding what support to expect from both the university and the practice teacher would be very helpful, particularly when things are not going too well.

Thanks LisaM - sounds like a good idea to me. We will be pulling all these thoughts together soon.

Thanks again

ed