TY - ADVS
T1 - Building & maintaining bridges - learning the lessons on the journey to involvement
AU - Ingram, Richard
AU - Dow, John
AU - Sinclair, Jim
N1 - We think the most important qualities for social service workers are anti-discriminatory values, respectful attitudes and very good personal communication skills. Users and carers should be involved in training workers to make sure people understand why this is important.” (Users and Carers Panel, 21st Century Review). For a good many years now there have been individuals and groups; both within the caring professions and out with, who have strived to see the involvement of those who use and receive services in the training of professionals. This goal has been realised to an extent within social work education where the involvement of service users and carers in the development and delivery of training programmes has been incorporated into the standards for qualifying programmes. The reality however, is that in practice each of the Universities delivering the programmes do so with varying levels of involvement. At the University of Dundee, service user and carer involvement runs like a thread throughout the programmes. This paper will explore the development of service user and carer involvement at the University of Dundee and it’s impact upon learning from the perspective of a Service Specialist (Service User expert), an Academic and a Graduate of the programme. A number of issues will be explored including how do we measure the impact of this upon practice; how do we consolidate what we have achieved so far; what does the future hold for Service User and Carer influence and how do we impact upon practitioners who do not have the benefit of this Service User and carer influence?
PY - 2008
Y1 - 2008
N2 - Many social workers are familiar with the apparent conceptual and practical boundaries between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Furthermore, there are implicit distinctions that associate ‘theory’ with ‘the academy’, and ‘practice’ with ‘the field’. There is ongoing scholarly work that aims to investigate the ways in which these boundaries may be crossed to achieve ‘more effective practice’ and ‘more relevant theory’, and constructive relationships between social workers in different spaces constituted as ‘the academy’ and ‘the field’. This presentation discusses a collaborative research project involving ‘practitioners’ in child and family welfare and child protection in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and ‘academics’ from Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The purpose of the research was to explore an alternative child protection practice repertoire by investigating with practitioners, the appropriateness of engaging with concepts from social constructionism within risk assessment frameworks. This presentation discusses how the collaborative research processes and emphasis on dialogue facilitated building bridges between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and ‘the academy’ and ‘the field’, and the outcomes that were achieved beyond those directly associated with the research aims. The presentation demonstrates the place of research in practice, the generation of knowledge for practice through relationships between researchers and practitioners, and the ways in which new knowledge and perspectives can become new practices.
AB - Many social workers are familiar with the apparent conceptual and practical boundaries between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’. Furthermore, there are implicit distinctions that associate ‘theory’ with ‘the academy’, and ‘practice’ with ‘the field’. There is ongoing scholarly work that aims to investigate the ways in which these boundaries may be crossed to achieve ‘more effective practice’ and ‘more relevant theory’, and constructive relationships between social workers in different spaces constituted as ‘the academy’ and ‘the field’. This presentation discusses a collaborative research project involving ‘practitioners’ in child and family welfare and child protection in Geelong, Victoria, Australia, and ‘academics’ from Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia. The purpose of the research was to explore an alternative child protection practice repertoire by investigating with practitioners, the appropriateness of engaging with concepts from social constructionism within risk assessment frameworks. This presentation discusses how the collaborative research processes and emphasis on dialogue facilitated building bridges between ‘theory’ and ‘practice’, and ‘the academy’ and ‘the field’, and the outcomes that were achieved beyond those directly associated with the research aims. The presentation demonstrates the place of research in practice, the generation of knowledge for practice through relationships between researchers and practitioners, and the ways in which new knowledge and perspectives can become new practices.
M3 - Digital or Visual Products
ER -