Social Work Placements

A Traveller's Guide

Mark Doel

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• eBook ISBN: 9781135190279
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medizin
• Subtopic: Sozialarbeit

Placements can be one of the most exciting parts of your social work training but also one of the most daunting. This Guide will help you to make the most of your practice learning opportunities.

The guide highlights how you can make the most of your placement, as well as anticipating some of the problem areas and pitfalls to avoid. It covers:

• preparing for your placement
• getting to grips with placement documentation
• understanding how and what you might learn on placement
• integrating theory with practice
• non-traditional placements
• anticipating difficulties and dealing with them
• getting the best from assessment and evaluation.

Using a cast of 'fellow travellers' – students, work-based supervisors, practice educators and college tutors – to illustrate issues raised, the Guide is accessible and contains plenty of case studies. It is the ideal book for anyone wanting to make sure their placement goes as well as possible, whether they are a student or a supervisor.

PART ONE
THE
BASICS

GETTING THERE

Social work students come to their courses via many different routes and in varied circumstances. The history of your journey to the course is likely, therefore, to influence the future journey to your placements. Have you just finished school or are you an older of all of these topics; for now, it is important that you think about what brought you to the course and how this will influence the shape, pattern and likely location of your placements.

All of these different routes to the social work programme will suggest different possibilities for your placement journey. What every student has in common is the requirement to study for a minimum of 200 days in practice sites with at least two different service user groups, and to meet certain standards of practice and learning that will be assessed during their placement.of all of these topics; for now, it is important that you think about what brought you to the course and how this will influence the shape, pattern and likely location of your placements.

SIMPLE RULES

To ensure that your journey to the placement is as successful as it can be, follow these three simple rules:

• Read the guidance that is provided for you by the social work programme in its Course Handbook; it pays to have a thorough understanding of this.
• Attend all the placement preparation sessions provided by the course; these will contain valuable advice to get you off to a good start. Don't rely on a friend to pass you the information.
• Complete all the documentation relating to your placement request promptly and conscientiously, making sure to keep appointments with your placement tutor.

RED TAPE

Documentation can be tedious but it is always important to deal with it promptly. When you are a qualified social worker you will have to handle red tape on behalf of service users to make sure they are well served, so start right now to show that you are capable of handling your own red tape, too.

READINESS

Documentation at the early stage of the course is likely to relate to readiness for learning, sometimes also called fitness for practice. Courses are required to test your readiness to commence a placement beforehand and each programme handles this in its own way. Make sure you are familiar with the procedures that your course uses and complete any paperwork that is asked of you (?Visa for practice learning 43).

PLACEMENT FINDING

Some courses do not have a placement until the second year of study, whilst others have a placement early in the first year. If the latter, this means that you will be asked to complete a placement request quite soon and this will often be accompanied by an opportunity to discuss your placement interests with your personal tutor or a specific placement tutor. You might have definite views about what kind of you would like it to be, or you may be very uncertain at this point. Wherever you are on that line, talk things through with the tutor, using your placement finding form as a basis for the discussion (⊲Learning Agreement).

Even if your placement is pretty much decided, perhaps because you are an employment-based student and your placement will be with your employer, it is always important to talk through the options with your tutor and make sure your preferences and concerns are noted in the documentation for Placement finding (⊲).

CRIMINAL RECORDS

The placement cannot go ahead without a Criminal Records Bureau (CRB) check; this is the equivalent of your passport so do nothing that might delay it (⊲).

HOURS AND HOLIDAYS

Placement expectations are often different from those that you have become used to at the university or college. You will usually be expected to be at the placement for the hours of work that employees at the practice site follow. If there are reasons why this should not or cannot be the case, discuss these very early on with your tutor so that the practice site can be asked what special arrangements might or might not be possible. Check in the handbook what the allowance for study time is and whether there is any holiday leave entitlement during the placement. Again, university terms often do not apply, and you are expected to follow the working days of the practice site. Always check and have the agreed hours and holidays recorded in the Learning agreement (⊲). Finally, if for religious reasons there are certain days or festivals that you wish to be excused from placement, it is very important that these are discussed in advance of placement finding and, ideally, as part of your application to the course.

CREDIT

If you are seeking credit for prior learning or experience make sure that you check this out well in advance; this will usually have been at the point at which you applied to come on the course or attended the selection process. Questions that need answers are whether your experience is sufficiently up to date and the mechanisms by which you will provide evidence of prior learning. You should be prepared for the fact that some of the procedures to provide evidence to back up your claim can be onerous, so much so that you may not feel like the credits have offered any relief from the full requirements.

CREDIT CHECK

There are many different kinds of credit with numerous acronyms:

• APEL (Accreditation of Prior Education and Learning)
• APCL (Accreditation of Prior Certified Learning)
• CATS (Credit Accumulation Transfer System)
• ECTS (European Credit Transfer System).

No credit can be given towards placements. (⊲ for more details)

CURRENCY

What are the financial arrangements for the placement? As a student, you do not receive any payment specific to your time on placement, nor do you have any extra fees for placements - though your bursary does include an element for travel to and from placement. You should check out arrangements for travel undertaken as part of your work for the placement - some sites reimburse but some do not (and some might pay for a bus pass).

For placement providers there are funds for practice learning which are provided centrally and channelled through each programme. A daily placement fee (DPF) is paid to placement providers, but you need to check how much this is, whether you receive all of it and how payments are organised. Payment for off-site supervisors (⊲Language) usually comes out of the daily placement fee. In some agencies the on-site supervisor receives a direct payment (an honorarium). All of these arrangements need to be agreed and confirmed before a placement starts, including the financial arrangements for placements that are cut short or extended for whatever reasons.

PROBLEMS WITH TRAVELLING

The social work programme will have told you at various points (admission, preparation, placement-finding discussions) that travel to placements is always a likelihood. Placements are not thick on the ground and most programmes have to search a wide area to provide sufficient placements, in terms of quality and quantity. This is true of programmes that are situated in an urban setting, so do not assume that a city-based course might not involve placement travel.

The course will try its best to take account of your personal circumstances, especially if these have changed in ways that you could not have anticipated. Longstanding caring responsibilities that you were aware of when you applied to the course are not the same as sudden changes in life events. You need to be honest with the programme from the point of application about what is possible in terms of travel so you will not be disappointed later.

TRAVELLERS WITH DISABILITIES

Placements have a duty and responsibility to provide for all students who have been admitted to a social work programme regardless of age, ethnicity, gender, faith, disability, etc. Disability discrimination is illegal and placements are expected to make all reasonable adjustments to ensure that students with physical disabilities (such as wheelchair users) and learning difficulties (such as dyslexia) can be placed.

To help practice sites fulfil this, it is important that students, supervisors, tutors and agency managers work together to consider what the student’s specific needs are and how the placement can best meet them. This is especially true of ‘hidden’ disabilities such as epilepsy, where it is important that placements know how to work with you to manage any potential medical emergencies.

Sites offering a placement to a student using a wheelchair might find this website useful:

http://www.wheelchairnet.org/WCN_TownHall/Docs/etiquette.html

GAY SOCIALWORKLAND

As a gay, lesbian or bisexual student you should consider whether you want or need access to appropriate support groups and declare any requests, so that the prospective placement can assess whether such provision is likely to be available and, if not, what alternatives might be put in place.

ISOLATED TRAVELLERS

The placement is intended to be a rewarding, if challenging experience. However, it should not be isolating. What supports might you need and expect if, for example you find yourself the only person from a black and minority ethnic group travelling in this particular incarnation of Socialworkland? It is important to discuss this possibility and what kinds of support (outside the placement if necessary) will help you to counter potential isolation.

GROUP TOURS

There are indications that group placements are becoming more common, especially with the growth of placements in nontraditional settings (⊲Groups and ⊲Group guiding ).

Whether you are on placement together with other students at the same practice site and/or experiencing group supervision, fellow students can be a valuable source of support and learning. Make sure that your individual needs will also be met; ⊲Learning agreement as a good place to discuss the balance of individual and group learning and support.

SPECIALIST DESTINATIONS

Though there are suggestions that parts of the social work qualification might start to specialise (

1), for now it is a generic one. This means that it qualifies you for social work in any setting. However, the practice of social work is now very largely in specialist settings – children and families, mental health, older adults, disabilities, criminal justice and the like. The placement provides a context for social work practice and the supervisor will help you make transition...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• DEDICATION
• CHARTS
• SYMBOLS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF SOCIALWORKLAND
• PART ONE: THE BASICS
• PART TWO: THE GUIDE
• PART THREE: THE CONTEXTS