Abstract
Service user and carer involvement in social work education is mandatory in the UK and therefore very widespread and advanced. Service users and carers participate in the design of the degree, the selection of students, the preparation for practice and much more. Outside of the English-speaking world it is much less common and developed. Aiming at developing service user involvement programmes at other Universities as well, the intent was to find crucial factors that guarantee for service user involvement to be meaningful and beneficial to all parties involved. The conducted study focuses on the service user, carer and student perspective on service user and carer involvement in a social work degree programme.
The research was conducted at Queen's University Belfast in 2013 and is based on a series of narrative interviews with service users, carers and students involved in the social work undergraduate degree.
Key points drawn from the research are:
- All participants are highly satisfied with the programme.
- Service users and carers aim at helping to improve social work education and appreciate their life experience being acknowledged as expert knowledge.
- Students appreciate the possibility to test their practice skills in a safe environment and a planned setting in order to prepare for their first practice placement.
Regarding recommendations for the development of a new programme it needs to be acknowledged that there cannot be a standardised guideline for service user and carer involvement in social work education. Each service users, carer, student and professor is unique and so is the structure of different universities. Each university needs to find their own fitting style and organisation for their respective programme, but they can benefit from previous experiences.
The university needs to be flexible regarding the specific life situations of service users and carers who contribute to the degree. Their life comes first, therefore schedules must be able to adapt to short-notice variations.
Another crucial point is the thorough preparation of everyone involved, guaranteeing for everyone's wellbeing. Quality assurance best derives from frequent checks and constant monitoring.
Most important and most difficult to tackle is a change the academic attitude in regards to knowledge and sources of valid knowledge. Service users and carers are not accepted in higher education - they are needed.
The session presents the central findings of this research while critically examining the possibility of formulation generalised recommendations. Space for discussion is given so that participants can share their own experience and express their opinion.