This paper shares learning from a project designed as part of a UK regional Teaching Partnership (TP) development to enhance service user and carer, or what we prefer to term ‘Educator-by Experienc...

background

The meeting place between service users 1 and students : Mediums of learning at the School of Social Work of the University of Sherbrooke

Enhancing ‘Educator by Experience’ Led Social Work Training: Lessons learned from the development of a Teaching Partnership funded project

This paper provides a reflexive account of some of the challenges that are arising with the involvement of service users and carers (co-educators) in social work education within the context of Covid-19. As Higher Education Institutions shift to primarily delivering social work education online, this has a knockon impact for the involvement of co-educators and this is the focus of the paper. The paper focuses on two key challenges being experienced; access to and use of technology, and the difficulties of creating safe and meaningful spaces online. The authors offer a discussion of these challenges and present some potential solutions that can be adopted to continue to support co-educators within social work education.

Involving co-educators in social work education in the context of Covid-19: Reflections on challenges and potential solutions

A major strand in social work’s history has been its paternalistic character, partly due to a philanthropic tradition, but also to the tendency to import an individualist expert model into social work practice. As a result, gaps have arisen between expert and experiential knowledge. In this article, so called ‘gap mending strategies’ developed by the international network PowerUs are discussed. PowerUs consists of teachers and researchers from schools of social work and representatives from service user organizations in nine European countries. The gaps as the network identifies them are presented and we share some processes within our practices that mend or maintain gaps between service users and professionals. Two main strategies will be explored in more detail—a strategy that has been developed in the UK of mainstreaming service user participation in all stages of social work education, and a strategy that has been developed in Scandinavia of developing joint courses for social work students and students from service user organizations. A main conclusion is that alliances between educational institutions and service user organizations will be important to get a fuller understanding of what gaps we are facing and how they best could be mended.

/pdf/mend-the-gap-strategies-for-user-involvement-in-social-work-1si3s7j7gw.pdf

The meeting place between service users 1 and students : Mediums of learning at the School of Social Work of the University of Sherbrooke

Citations

Enhancing ‘Educator by Experience’ Led Social Work Training: Lessons learned from the development of a Teaching Partnership funded project

Involving co-educators in social work education in the context of Covid-19: Reflections on challenges and potential solutions

References

Mend the gap – strategies for user involvement in social work education

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