Service User and Carer Participation in Social Work

Janet Warren

• Publisher: Learning Matters
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9780857252388
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Travail social

This is the first text to examine the principal elements of service user involvement and participation across both adult and children?s services. A valuable learning resource, it draws together information from research, service users, carers and practitioners across both groups. In addition, it gives an overview of the specific knowledge, attitude and skills that social workers need for training at qualifying level and integrates theory with evidence to inform everyday social work practice. Furthermore, case studies and activities encourage reflection and the application of this knowledge to practice situations.

Chapter 1

Understanding service user
and carer involvement and
participation

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ACHIEVING A SOCIAL WORK DEGREE

This chapter will help you to meet the following National Occupational Standards (see the Skills for Care website, www.skillsforcare.org.uk):

Key Role 1: Prepare for, and work with individuals, families, carers, groups and communities to assess their needs and circumstances.

• Work with individuals, families, carers, groups and communities to help them make informed decisions.
• Assess needs and options to recommend a course of action.

Key Role 2: Plan, carry out, review and evaluate social work practice, with individuals, families, carers, groups, communities and other professionals.

• Respond to crisis situations.
• Interact with individuals, families, carers, groups and communities to achieve change and development and to improve life opportunities.
• Prepare, produce, implement and evaluate plans with individuals, families, carers, groups, communities and professional colleagues.
• Support the development of networks to meet assessed needs and planned outcomes.
• Work with groups to promote individual growth, development and independence.

Key Role 3: Support individuals to represent their needs, views and circumstances.

• Advocate with, and on behalf of, individuals, families, carers, groups and communities.
• Prepare for, and participate in decision-making forums.

Key Role 4: Manage risk to individuals, families, carers, groups, communities, self and colleagues.

• Assess and manage risks to individuals, families, carers, groups and communities.

Key Role 5: Manage and be accountable, with supervision and support, for your own social work practice within your organisation.

• Contribute to the management of resources and services.
• Manage, present and share records and reports.

Key Role 6: Demonstrate professional competence in social work practice.

• Research, analyse, evaluate, and use current knowledge of best social work practice.
• Manage complex ethical issues, dilemmas and conflicts.

It will also introduce you to the following academic standards as set out in the social work subject benchmark statements:

3.1.1 Social work services and service users

• The nature of social work services in a diverse society.
• The relationship between agency policies, legal requirements and professional boundaries in shaping the nature of services provided in inter-disciplinary contexts and the issues associated with working across professional boundaries and within different disciplinary groups.

3.1.2 The service delivery context

• The issues and trends in modern public and social policy and their relationship to contemporary practice and service delivery in social work.
• The significance of legislative and legal frameworks and service delivery standards.
• The current range and appropriateness of statutory, voluntary and private agencies providing community-based, day-care, residential and other services and the organisational systems inherent within these.

3.1.3 Values and ethics

• The moral concepts of rights, responsibility, freedom, authority and power inherent in the practice of social workers as moral and statutory agents.

3.1.4 Social work theory

• Research-based concepts and critical explanations from social work theory and other disciplines that contribute to the knowledge base of social work.

3.1.5 The nature of social work practice

• The place of theoretical perspectives and evidence from international research in assessment and decision-making processes in social work practice.

The subject skills highlighted to demonstrate this knowledge in practice include:

3.2.2 Problem-solving skills

3.2.2.1 Managing problem-solving activities.

3.2.2.2 Gathering information.

3.2.2.3 Analysis and synthesis.

3.2.2.4 Intervention and evaluation.

3.2.3 Communication skills

• Listen actively to others, engage appropriately with the life experiences of service users, understand accurately their viewpoint and overcome personal prejudices to respond appropriately to a range of complex personal and interpersonal situations.

3.2.4 Skills in working with others

• Involve users of social work services in ways that increase their resources, capacity and power to influence factors affecting their lives.
• Consult actively with others, including service users, who hold relevant information or expertise.
• Act co-operatively with others, liaising and negotiating across differences such as organisational and professional boundaries and differences of identity or language.
• Develop effective helping relationships and partnerships with other individuals, groups and organisations that facilitate change.

5.2.1 Knowledge and understanding

• Ability to use this knowledge and understanding in work within specific practice contexts.

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Introduction

Participation and involvement of service users and carers has become a key issue in current social work policy, practice, research and education. Over the past two decades, there has been a marked increase in the involvement of service users and carers in the provision of health and social care services across the United Kingdom. This involvement has taken place in many different forms, including:

• individual care planning, service delivery and review;
• the planning and development of services;
• the organisation and management of social work and social care;
• the development of service user and carer-led initiatives;
• staff and student training;
• research.

Service user and carer participation in shaping and developing health and social care services throughout England and Wales has been a central theme in the government’s modernisation agenda (see, for example, Department of Health, 1998a, 2000b, 2001b). The need for involvement in the planning, development, provision and arrangement of social and health care services originates from a long-standing concern about raising standards in service delivery, so that services can be improved and become more effective in meeting complex and diverse needs. In consequence, service user and carer involvement and influence now extend across the full spectrum of services for children and families, people with disabilities, older people’s and mental health service provision.

The involvement of service users and carers in health and social care education is essential to the development of service user and carer participation in practice. Indeed, the importance of service user and carer participation has been recognised in the government’s reform of social work education. As you may already be aware from your own training experiences, higher education institutions that offer social work training programmes are now required to involve service users and carers as stakeholders in all parts of the design and delivery of the programme (Levin, 2004, p3). This is important so that trainee social workers can gain a thorough grounding in service users’ and carers’ experiences and expectations from the very start of their training and careers (Levin, 2004, p2), and can develop and deliver a better service. The new social work qualifying degree, therefore, focuses on how academic learning can support practice by better equipping social work practitioners to include service users and carers in decision-making processes that affect their own lives. This is important, for if the quality of services is to be improved, all newly qualified social workers need to know how to make services more sensitive to the needs and preferences of the individuals who use them, and how to extend the capacity of service users and carers to participate in decisions about service design, management and review.

Being skilled in working in partnership is a key requirement for social workers. This is reflected in the Teaching, Learning and Assessment Requirements for Social Work Training:

As well as providing teaching, learning and assessment across the full range of the occupational standards and benchmark statement, providers will have to demonstrate that all students undertake specific learning and assessment in the following key areas:

• partnership working and information sharing across professional disciplines and agencies.

(DoH, 2002b, pp3–4)

Partnership working, in this context, does not just refer to working together with professionals from other disciplines and agencies. It refers also to the need for social workers to work alongside service users and carers, engaging them as partners in, for example, jointly planning services or jointly assessing situations and negotiating the delivery of services. The building and sustaining of such partnerships demands increased levels of power sharing and equality, a theme that will be returned to in Chapters 3 and 4 when we explore different models of participatory practice, and the concept of empowering service user and carer participation.

It may be worth considering for a moment some of the specific gains that arise from involving service users and carers in the professional training of social workers.

ACTIVITY 1.1

Why might it be helpful for service users and carers to be involved in training social workers?

List as many reasons as you can for involving service users and carers in training people.

If you are not currently involved in a training programme, think about what you could gain personally from training that is delivered by a service user or carer.

Comment

There is a number of positive reasons or benefits that you could have listed, so don’t worry if what you have written does not quite correspond with what follows. The gains identified below have been drawn from a report that was produced in 1994 to provide guidance on the development of policy and practice to increase service user involvement in social work training (Beresford, 1994). The list, however, can be applied equally well to the involvement of service users and carers in social work training today. Generally, the participation and involvement of service users and carers provide us with opportunities to:

• value service users and carers for who they are. It is important that we recognise the contribution that they can make, the benefits that participation can bring to our organisations and the people whom we work with, and th...