INTRODUCTION
Service user and carer involvement in social work education ā where are we now? ā Part 1
This journal was proud to produce the first special edition on service user involvement in 2006 (Vol25 No.4) with 11 pioneering articles from the UK. One of those authors contributing to the first special edition, June Sadd, is also one of the guest editors of this special edition.
Over the years, the journal has continued to publish creative and challenging articles on service user involvement in social work education, reflecting a commitment to promoting further understanding in this important and developing area of knowledge. Importantly also, the journal has retained two places on its main board for service users and carers who play a key role in its development. This special edition and its call for papers, have been developed jointly by a team of service users and academics who between them, have widely published and practiced in the area of service user and carer involvement in Britain and Northern Ireland. The editorial team, therefore, worked closely together on all aspects of production for this special edition.
As it is now the 10th anniversary of this first ground-breaking edition, the current special edition editors wondered, āwhat has happened since 2006?ā This is what this two part special edition seeks to answer. The first thing that stands out is that the involvement of service users in social work education is now much more established, not only in the UK where it is mandated by key relevant regulatory bodies as a requirement for programme registration, but internationally as well. In other countries, we see examples of how āinvolvementā has become increasingly embedded within education, even though it is not a curriculum requirement as it is across the four nations of the UK. However, that does not mean that it is any worse or better or more inclusive. You, the reader can decide on that, as you read the contributions of the special edition Parts 1 and 2.
Back in 2006, all the contributors to the special edition were based in the UK. For this special edition, we originally had 45 abstracts submitted representing 13 different countries, hence our reasoning behind creating and devoting a double special issue to this important topic. Interestingly, none of these submissions came from North America, even though our North American colleagues regularly contribute to the journal. We do not know whether this is because we use different terminologies for the same things or if there is something more structurally inbuilt in North American social work education that has decided that service users/clients should not, or cannot, be involved as key partners in the process. This is something we will try and find out more about.
In this, the first part of a two part special edition, we have contributions from five countries: Australia, England, Israel, Italy and Scotland. We have had contributions from those self identifying as service users, service users and academics, and by academics who are also service users (Fox). This provides the reader with a rich diversity and multiplicity of challenging intersections and perspectives. As this special edition highlights, these identifiers are fluid and are not fixed for life, but can and do change. Todayās academic may be tomorrowās service user and vice versa, whilst not forgetting it is also possible to be both at the same time. This special edition sees both perspectives as essential for the continuing development of effective social work education and practice. For example, Fox identifies her hybrid identity, both as a social work academic and as a service user, as a strength allowing her to draw on different types of knowledge including experiential, practice and academic knowledge. In particular, she focuses on the place of experiential wisdom and how it can be shared in social work education.
However, it is also acknowledged that the service user perspective has often been silenced, othered or trivialised with the nature of its tacit knowledge deemed to be inferior to academic knowledge. This special edition seeks to challenge this view and argues that a healthy social work needs both practitioners and academics to be in a continuous dialogue with service users and carers learning with and from each other. In this way, we can ensure that the next generation of social work students will be fit for purpose and that we would be happy for them to be visiting us, or our families, in our time of need.
Part 1 of the special edition involves a wide range of service user groups including articles focusing on service users who are older people (Gutman and Ramon) those with a mental health diagnosis (Dorozenko, Ridley, Martin and Mayhoub, women in prison (Raikes and Balen) and those with learning difficulties (Ward, Raphael(C), Clark and Raphael(V)). The other articles contain the experiences of a range of service users and carers. Gutman and Ramon undertook a comparative research study to evaluate the involvement of older service users in social work education in Israel and England. One of the interesting findings from this study was that that the Israeli students valued the involvement of service users more so than those in England. It is suggested that this is because service user involvement is a new development. Dorozenko et al. describe a project in Australia which went beyond the norm of guest lecturing for people with experience of mental health services. In particular, they highlight the processes and findings from their Valuing Lived Experience Project.
Ward et al. argue that people with learning disabilities have traditionally been excluded for involvement in social work programmes. They then describe how their university worked with a man with profound and multiple learning disabilities who was commissioned to design and deliver specialist teaching to qualifying social workers. From this experience, they argue that it is our lack of imagination and our assumptions and attitudes about peopleās capabilities that are the real barriers to inclusion. Cabiati and Raineri, from an Italian perspective, also discuss how stigmatizing attitudes form barriers to working with service users and carers. In seeking to reduce these barriers, they describe the results from their project of exposing students to service users and carers and measuring the studentās attitudes pre and post involvement on an attitudes scale and through the use of a qualitative interview. The results suggested that social work students showed reduced stigmatizing attitudes after this contact.
Raikes and Balen also recount their experiences of working with another often excluded group, imprisoned mothers. They discuss the development and findings of an inter-professional workshop between social work, police and nursing students in the UK. As a result of the workshop, the students reported an increased understanding of the challenges facing children whilst their mother was in prison and the need for inter-disciplinary work to provide an effective service to these mothers.
This leads onto Sen, McLelland and Jowettās article on the running of four āliving librariesā in which the āliving booksā of the lived experiences of carers and service users are used to promote a dialogue between carers, service users, students, practitioners and social work educators. They also discuss how the living libraries were established, the ground rules for their use and their potential to impact upon social work education.
The other articles contain a range of service user groups whist Levy describes the results of a three-year experiential study in Scotland involving student social workers spending 15Ā hours with a service user and/or carers. During this time, the students are expected to discuss two policy practice questions, whereby the placement becomes both a site of knowledge creation and knowledge application in practice. One reinforcing and challenging the other.
Rooney, Unwin and Osborne report on a service user and carer led research project into the professional training of social workers and the influence of service users and carers. This qualitative research found that there were significant benefits for service users and carers, not only in terms of increased self-development, but also in increased confidence in managing their own care needs. This suggests that the benefits of such involvement are more far reaching than previously thought whilst such involvement may also challenge the increasingly marketized higher education culture.
As you can see, the range of articles on service user and carer involvement in social work education in this Part 1 edition, not only describe the processes of this involvement, but also seek to evaluate if it has been effective or not. The evaluations though, tend to be module/workshop specific and, except for Levy, which covers a 3Ā year period, tend not to be longitudinal. There is also a bias within these articles of being primarily qualitative. When we come to write about the articles in the special edition Part 2, these are themes we will return to and discuss further.
We feel we have now answered an important part of our question for this special edition. Service user and carer involvement continues to grow and has blossomed in many ways into an established way of working in many social work education settings across the world. The popularity of the special edition, evidenced by the number of submissions we received, is testament to the fact that there is a wealth of interesting work going on which we take immense encouragement from. The next special edition will feature additional aspects of this important topic. For now, we hope you enjoy reading and learning from the work included in this first part of our two special editions.
Guest Editors
Hugh McLaughlin, June Sadd,
Brendan McKeever, Joseph Duffy
INTRODUCTION
Service user and carer involvement in social work education ā where are we now? ā Part 2
This second of our special editions features papers which are linked by the following themes: international examples of service user involvement, the nature of service user knowledge, service user involvement in research and an analysis of the impact of involvement on subsequent social work practice.
The first paper by Ole Petter Askheim, Peter Beresford & Cecilia Heule provides an important focus on ways of addressing the gaps between service users and professionals that can characterise and shape social work practice. By using examples from social work practice and education in both Scandinavia and the UK, these authors argue that their experiences of meaningful partnership working in social work education can shine an important light on analysing both the opportunities and challenges that need to be considered.
The second paper by Merav Moshe Grodofsky & Carolyn Gutman brings service users and social work students together in an international context to examine perceptions of human rights. Again, a similar theme emerges about partnership working and the ingredients necessary for this to work between professional staff as providers and service users on the receiving end. The common experiences of exclusion and marginalisation shared by students and service users about human rights issues highlight the fact that the experience of othering is not something solely experienced by service users.
The third paper by Kieron Hatton interrogates the nature of service user knowledge and provides a necessary critical analysis. The author contextualises this debate on knowledge within a partnership approach to social work curriculum design involving service users. The paper mirrors the social work practice requirements around social justice and social change by examining how these key aspects are also entwined within the fabric of meaningfully collaborating with service users in the educational setting.
The fourth paper by Petra VidemŔek reports on the findings of a project where social work students and service users collaborated together to research the views of mental health service users living in group care settings. This paper raises questions and issues around the contribution to research of service users whose skills and insights are based on their own lived experience. In this way, again we see the theme of knowledge being interrogated and where service user knowledge can be positioned within the overall continuum of what counts as knowing.
The fifth paper by Hilda Loughran & Gary Broderick again positions service users in an important and elevated position as examiners in the assessment of a Masters level social work programme. Again, what we see is that the social work educational context can be a potentially transformative site for influencing and shaping the types of inclusive social work practice that service users want from social workers when they qualify. So therefore, whilst such partnership working is important in the learning and educational context, this will amount to little if social workers when they qualify donāt follow through on these important messages about involvement in their day-to-day work with service users and carers.
The final paper in this collection by Mel Hughes links to this latter point in its focus on evaluating the impact of service user and carer educational involvement on social work studentsā practice when they qualify. This is becoming an emerging area of research given that service user and carer involvement has now been part of UK social work education for about fifteen years but there are to date too few studies focusing on impact. Interestingly, this paper highlights the individualistic nature of how service user involvement impacts on students when they are in practice and are reflecting back on their learning. This paper therefore points educators towards reflections on how service user and carer involvement can be developed in ways which will further augment the learning experience for students, thinking ahead to when they qualify.
Ideas in Action includes a first for the journal with an article on the issues involved in participatory film-making between experts by experience, social workers and therapists by Yohai Hakak and Kevin Holmes. This is in keeping with the special edition and identifies an alternative way in which service users can contribute to the development of social work education.
We also include a book review by a German foster carer Andrea Kuhn and the foster childās sister Madeline Kuhn reviewing, from their perspective, reviewing the messages for foster carers and social workers working with a traumatised foster child. We would welcome further book reviews by service users and carers.
Reflecting on the question we posed for these two special editions, we feel we can express confidence that progress has been considerable in regard to the expanding way in which service user and carer involvement have taken hold within social work education. In particular, we want to highlight how what was a peculiarly UK initiative is now an international one. We in the UK now have as much to learn from our international colleagues as they do from us. It is however interesting to note that whilst we had abstracts from 13 different countries there were none from the US or Canada. It should also be noted that this way of working is not without its challenges as various authors have identified in special editions part 1 and 2, it often brings challenges from colleagues, service users and carers, academics and students. It is not to be entered into lightly, but we would argue that the benefits can outweigh the costs. It is also a form of education that requires academics to accept that they do not have all the answers and that co-production in learning is a positive development. There is a need to be open to sharing power and learning from others whether they be service users, carers or students.
It was good to see that we can now demonstrate a wider range of involvement building on service user and carer testimonies. We can now point to a host of examples to show creative and imaginative ways in which this important knowledge has been incorporated to assist students in their learning and development of practice insights. Increasingly, what we now see from these examples is how the educational setting has become a very important learning arena for students to understand how their social work practice needs to respond in meeting the needs of service users and carers when they qualify. This arena is also important for service users and carers representing a site for affirming self-esteem and promoting social justice.
It is also welcome to see the development of theorising to develop our understanding of service user knowledge and where and how this fits alongside other types of knowledge that are necessary for social work students in their learning. This further enquiry is now increasingly evident not only in looking at the contribution of user knowledges to education but also to research. The routine evaluation of service user involvement in social work education, common to all of the papers in this second edition, adds considerably to developing the evidence base to support and promote the contribution of user knowledge to education and research. In this way, the status of user knowledge is enhanced through the provision of evidence which is regarded as objective, thereby challenging the criticism of service user knowledge being too individualistic and subjective.
There are however, still challenges to overcome; the major of these is the continuing need to build up a bank of outcome evidence. Much of this work is still short-term and process driven in nature and we need more longer term evidence to identify how the involvement of service users and carers in social work education, both qualifying and post-qualifying, impacts upon the outcomes for service users and the quality of social work practice. There is also a need to continue to show that service user and carerās meaningful involvement in social work education is not merely a micro issue of improving individual practice, but also a macro issue challenging the grounds on which groups become āotheredā and where notions of ādeservingā and āundeservingā are constructed. This is needed more than ever in a globalised world, still suffering the material effects of austerity politics, the increasing privatisation of social life and the growth of the independent and for-profit sectors alongside increasing ideologically motivated attacks on social welfare. It is the view of these editors; service user, academic, academic and service user, service user and academic, academic and potential service user, that social work education is richer and more relevant when it includes and learns from the experiences of those who are on the receiving end of social work practice.
Guest Editors
Joe Duffy, Brendan McKeever,
Hugh McLaughlin, June Sadd
