The New Social Work Practice

Exercises and Activities for Training and Developing Social Workers

Mark Doel, Steven Shardlow

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2019
• Print ISBN: 9780367147532
• eBook ISBN: 9780429620928
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

First published in 1998, this book is a fully revised and updated edition of Social Work Practice, first published in 1993 as a training manual.

The New Social Work Practice presents a comprehensive view of contemporary social work. Whether it be general or specialist practice, care and control or power and oppression, these central issues and recurring themes are given a topical treatment. Changes in core aspects of social work are fully explored in lively and realistic ways, combining the essence of good practice with current organizational demands.

The aim of the original workbook remains intact: to guide and stimulate learning about social work practice. The book achieves this purpose by presenting various aspects of social work using different settings and contexts. New and revised activities are included to promote discussion, understanding, learning and better practice. Taken toether, the topics and themes in the book define the essential elements of a curriculum for social work practice.

I

Foundations of practice

Chapters 1-4 focus on the student's beliefs, values and feelings, and how these relate to social work practice and to the student's work in agencies:

• Orientation (Chapter 1) makes the induction process explicit rather than haphazard, helping students to settle into new work settings.
• The second chapter, Worldview, focuses on the way beliefs influence how the students view the world. It also opens up opportunities to explore a student's attitude to the relationship between theory and practice.
• Professionalism and self-presentation (Chapter 3) introduces students to the first of many paradoxes in social work practice: the need to be warm and approachable at the same time as keeping a cool, professional distance, and is concerned with questions of personal style and the verbal and non-verbal messages which students give to clients and colleagues. This chapter examines differences between friendships and workships (working relationships) and how different settings may have different codes of professional practice.
• Finally, Feelings and actions (Chapter 4) explores how students deal with strong emotions or feelings which they find unacceptable or disturbing; and how students' feelings and actions are mediated by their values.

'Foundations of practice' is intended to introduce the social work learner to a number of practice dilemmas. The purpose of these chapters is to help students learn how to think critically about their own practice in the light of these dilemmas, and to develop self-aware practice. Put simply, this means knowing why you're doing what you're doing when you're doing it.

The development of an understanding of the significance of factors such as race, gender and class for the student's personal outlook is paramount in all the chapters. These factors influence what we do in a profound way and are an essential component of self-aware practice.

It is important to establish a good climate for learning, so that students feel able to take risks safely. By working jointly with students on the activities contained in the chapters, practice teachers are showing commitment to improving their own practice. The activities do not rely on 'right answers', because these are usually elusive, but they do depend on a willingness to be explicit about the knowledge, the values and the beliefs which are the foundations for the practice. This is more demanding than learning 'facts'.

Students who successfully complete 'Foundations of practice' will have a better understanding of their own beliefs and values and how these influence their practice. They will broaden their repertoire of styles, consolidating the strengths they bring from their previous experience and developing a commitment to work on areas which need improvement. They will have a good foundation in basic skills which are often taken for granted, but which need careful learning.

1 Orientation

About Activity 1: Who takes sugar?

The orientation exercise consists of a number of questions which students are asked to complete during the first few days on placement, as part of the induction to work in the agency This chapter contains two sample exercises designed to serve as models on which you can base an activity of your own invention and design. In developing an activity specific to your area of practice, it is essential to frame the questions in such a way that they help the student to get to know key people and find out about significant places and information.

Purpose

Finding your way around a new place is seldom easy. Remind yourself of when you started a new job and you will have an idea of how the students feel when they start a placement. The purpose of this activity is to help students to orientate themselves to the placement as quickly as possible in a way that reflects the active approach they will be learning to practise throughout the placement.

Method

• This is an activity best completed by students acting on their own, and it can be introduced on the first day. The purpose of the activity needs to be carefully explained as:
  • - an example of the kind of activity the student will be doing;
  • - a means to see how the student completes a task;
  • - an entertaining way to feel at home and find out about the placement.
  Tell students what your expectations are: you expect them to complete most of the questions, but there may be a few they have not been able to answer. (This introduction should take about 15 minutes.)
• Arrange a time later the next day to find out how the student is getting on. You are not expecting everything to be completed by then, but it will give you both an opportunity to see if there are any major difficulties. (This will take 5-10 minutes, but more time may be needed if the student is experiencing difficulties.)
• Arrange a time three or four days into the placement to review the student's work on the Orientation exercise. (Allow about 30 minutes.)

Variations

This activity can be used in any setting, though the questions need to be tailored to the specific placement. When devising a similar exercise, ask yourself which people and places are likely to be significant for the student during the placement, so you can construct appropriate questions. Are you going to have 'true-false' questions or open ones? How far are the questions going to focus on the 'inside' or lead the student into the community?

Two examples of the activity are provided, one based on the example of a home for older people, 'Who takes sugar in Oakbrook Home?'; the other, 'Who wears the sandals in the office?', based on community practice. One uses true-false questions; the other requires students to provide more detailed information. In producing your own version you will need to decide which format to use, whether to mix and match, and how testing or controversial to make your questions. In the examples provided students will be forced to confront some significant issues - you may decide that these should be introduced later in the placement.

You will need to consider whether to consult people in advance: you want this to be a positive experience for the student and not everybody takes kindly to questioning.

Activity 1 WHO TAKES SUGAR?

Reproduced from The new social work practice by Mark Doel and Steven Shardlow, Arena, Aldershot

Notes for practice teachers

Students are likely to feel strange during the first few days of the placement. Reactions to new learning experiences are many and varied (Shardlow and Doel, 1996, pp. 164-7). They may not know many people nor where things are, and they have to fathom the often complex relationships among their new colleagues. They do this with very little knowledge of the history of existing relationships and the culture of the agency. Above all, the student is aware that, though this is the beginning of the placement, the end is already in sight and that the contact with the agency is limited.

Anticipating students' feelings means giving care and attention to the details of their introduction and taking account of their needs, ensuring they are included on any rosters, or that their name is on the signing-out board, that they have a desk or workspace complete with information packs and stationery, and that they are introduced to immediate members of the team. You need to welcome the student personally (you can suggest a student starts the first day an hour after you, to give you time to deal with anything that needs your immediate attention). A warm welcome is a considerable improvement on the pile of unallocated work which has been known to greet a student on their first day.

Preparation for the placement is a process which predated the placement, with informal contact and a meeting to work in more detail on the learning objectives. Once the student has begun the placement, a guided introduction is important if the student is to make quick progress in the agency. However, as the practice teacher, you have your own work demands which mean you cannot be responsible for all of the student's time. Moreover, the student does not want to feel like an extra limb, incapable of any independent action. How can students be guided through the workplace, getting a broad-brush feel of its work and make the acquaintance of various people, without feeling led by the hand?

Orientation exercise

A simple fact-finding exercise can help to achieve these aims. The practice teacher can point the student in specific directions by the nature of the questions in the exercise, and the students can work at their own pace to answer them. The exercise can be revised before each placement so that the information which the student collects is relevant and beneficial to you and your team (the student's enquiries may help you to document some changes).

'Who takes sugar?' orients a student to a residential home for elderly people, and 'Who wears the sandals?' to work in the local community. You should design the orientation exercise around the working community which the student needs to get to know. The physical layout of the workplace affects the contact, or lack of it, between colleagues. In a tower block, for example, contact with people on different floors does not happen by chance, so an effort is necessary to establish a pattern of meeting colleagues whose advice or support may be important, but whose habitat may feel unfamiliar. The 'shape' of a small unit or local team may become quickly familiar, but links with people outside may be hard to establish, reinforcing inward-looking patterns of work. How can 'Who takes sugar?' be supplemented to point the student outside the immediate setting of the home?

In addition to focusing on people and places, the exercise should also point to issues which you will be addressing during the placement, for example client and user power, decision-making processes and ethnicity. It is hoped, too, that the student will build on these contacts in order to find out more about the jobs of other workers and the perceptions of people who use the agency.

Students can be encouraged to think about their experiences as newcomers to the agency in comparison with those of clients, who are also new to the agency. The experiences of clients have been graphically summed up in the title of a chapter in Davies's (1994) The Essential Social Worker: 'First encounter: the client enters an alien world'. Thinking about the similarities and differences between the experiences of students and clients can help to develop students' empathy with their clients.

Let the student know how an activity may be used. For example, if the exercise is part of the examination of the student's competence, this must be made explicit before the work begins. An activity such as 'Who takes sugar?' would not normally be part of the examination of the student's practice, though the creation of such an exercise by the current student for use by future students could be part of the formal assessment. The emphasis of the orientation exercise is on learning rather than performance.

Students who return to the practice teaching session with most of the information, who enjoyed the encounters with other people, who connect with the issues and with the people they meet are likely to be a joy to have around. But what if a student returns with muddled or terse responses and little information? You will want to find out how the student set about the task and make links between this ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Table of Contents
• List of figures
• Acknowledgements
• Preface
• Entry: Supervision and reflective practice
• PART I Foundations of practice
• PART II Direct practice
• PART III Agency Practice
• PART IV Themes of practice
• Exit: Comparative social work
• Bibliography
• Index