Transcript

SARAH:

Hi, my name's Sarah Brown. I'm a staff tutor and regional academic at the Open University. I have been involved in practice and education in many different ways. I was lead on the PEPS refreshed guidance document in 2022. And in my role in the university, I'm committed to looking at how we can better do practice education and incorporate the voices of those who've lived experience of social work in that process.

DANIEL:

Hi, I’m Daniel, I'm one of the OU’s lived experience reps. We are an integral part of how the OU works these days, especially with the social work program. We believe wholeheartedly in co-production in everything we do, and we have people from all over the UK, including the devolved nations, who assist the university in doing this and I'm privileged.

HAMEED:

Hello. Hi, my name is Hameed Khan. I'm an ex-service user of mental health services. I'm a carer for my mum. And also, I have worked in community development teaching prior to becoming a full-time carer.

SARAH

Sarah: Thank you for being here, Hameed and Daniel, and taking the time out to talk about this really important topic. Hameed, I wonder if you could give me a little bit more information about the sorts of things that they have to do to get assistance for their placements?

HAMEED:

They are matched according to their suitability and requirements to a placement. Once that takes place, and they will be allocated a practice educator, they will know who… which placement they are going to and a learning agreement will be put together and signed by the practice educator and the student and also sometimes with the practice supervisor, to say what they will work towards in terms of achieving their PCFs, which is, I think known as Professional Competence framework [Professional Capabilities Framework] or social work domains, which are set out by Social Work England, that students need to work towards achieving competence in those areas.

They will have an interim meeting during the placement to make sure that the placement is going well, that they're on top of what should be done, on top of how much work should be done halfway, they will have feedback from the service user around how they worked on their case or supported them. They will do a lot of critical reflection on the observations, usually applying the social theory reflection models.

And finally, the placement portfolio will come to moderation at practice assessment panel. Where they will make sure that it's been marked fairly, consistently and that everything has been met by the student in terms of their academic and placement requirement.

SARAH:

Really helpful overview of complex behind the scenes work, if you like, that happens to make sure that practice placement work is rigorously looked at and assessed by this really diverse group of people. So, thank you for that.

Daniel, I'm interested to know your thoughts on what you think the benefits of assessment of students are by people with lived experience?

DANIEL:

The benefits are huge and wide ranging. It's all about customer service these days. Whatever we do in every aspect of life, from the train that you catch to the broadband that we're working on today, to the social work services that we receive, everything is about delivering the best products for the client, for the customer, the service user, and social work is now no different.

So, the fact that we as people with lived experience are involved in this process is just brilliant, we can pick up on things that an academic would pick up on but wouldn’t necessarily read so much into. So for example, a social worker or a trainee social worker rather could come in and use language that is not necessarily great, that is likely to offend or upset or make people feel belittled.

I personally set the benchmark for this for each student when I work with, each student I interview, my benchmark is would I want them as my social worker, as someone with a sight impairment, or perhaps more pertinently at the moment, as my parent’s social worker, because my parents are both in their 70s and with various health conditions and disabilities, a time is going to come sooner rather than later where they need input, and if they’re warm and they're friendly and they come and they listen, and they're happy to sort of talk to people and listen to people and act on their views and everything else: they’ve passed that benchmark. If they don't, I will have no hesitation in very politely telling them and making sure that they carry that feedback forward and make practical use of it.

SARAH:

Hameed, could you tell us a little bit about your experiences of assessing students in their practice placement, work?

HAMEED:

In house OU Social and carers group - We're not involved directly in placement assessments. However, the service users and carers that the students will work with in placement will give feedback, will carry out an observation, will offer students feedback in terms of how they worked with them, in terms of supporting them in a professional manner and demonstrating their social work competency skills that they gain on placement.

We are involved from the service user and carer engagement group from Open University in the practice assessment panels. So what happens, portfolios are handed in for placement. We receive a sample of those portfolios. I would read through to make sure sufficient supervisions took place, hours have been recorded accurately and met the full requirement over how many hours they need to do on placement days. And then we meet as a practice assessment panel, where all the practice educators who were involved in the placement, academic staff known as practice tutors or placement tutors, and myself or whoever is represented, social and carers will be at that meeting to discuss in detail anything that needs to be flagged up, any positive, things that we can recommend or anything that needs to improve or things that are not being met in a certain portfolio, why that portfolio is not going through at this stage as a pass.

So, it's a great meeting because it means that everyone has a good stake in sharing their views. And it's a very level platform it's a fairer platform because not just academic staff, not just practice educator, not just service users that are making those decisions, but doing as a joint team.

SARAH:

What I've really taken away from what you've said is about how we need to hear the diversity of experiences of people lived experience with the social work learners so that we can get different perspectives, on the assessment of them. So that's really helpful. Thank you. It's a very strong case for hearing the voices of people who lived experience. What do you think the challenges are of doing this though?

HAMEED:

I would like to first of all change the language. Do not call it challenges; I would like to change that to opportunities of doing things differently. I think the problem we have is that sometimes we see things as obstacles and then we think, oh, we can't do this or we can't do that.

I think we say, okay, there's opportunities here to try something different, do something differently. And one of the things I would recommend is that we need to understand that nothing stays the same. The world changes so does social work, the professional is changing with time because obviously everything in society changes and we need to start thinking about how we do things to engage people on a fuller scale by removing the challenges and seeing those as opportunities to try and work in different ways.

So, as I would just echo what Daniel said, let's think about how we can work in creating spaces and doing things in an inclusive manner. There will be challenges, but it's about changing them into opportunities to work in a new way.

SARAH:

And I absolutely take on board the phrasing of that and I like that. So, thank you for bringing that to our attention Hameed.

So, thinking about what this might look like, when social work students are on placements, I wonder if you might share some examples of how feedback from you, or maybe somebody else with lived experience has impacted on the students learning and maybe their future practice. Daniel, did you have an example?

DANIEL:

Actually, I’ve got a wonderful example. Each year the OU runs an introductory residential weekend for our postgraduate diploma social work students. This is generally held in the February of each year, the first one to be delivered in person was February 2023, and we had some fantastic students with us that weekend and we had great fun working with them on communications skills. And Q&As about, life with, whatever challenges or issues we are facing. And we have quite a diverse range there. Many, many, many questions and so many different things shared and very special time. Four months down the line from that, I was standing on a platform at, a London Underground station, and someone tapped me on the shoulder and said, excuse me, you're Daniel, aren’t you? And I said, yes, thinking how on earth does someone know me on a crowded platform at rush hour on the central line? And she said, you were at the OU, social work residential earlier this year. So, you talked to me about, you know, an experience that you had in your life and were able to be a huge help to be someone I was dealing with as a, as a, as client in my, my job and also something that I was able to carry forward into my learning and development as a social worker, as a full, fully qualified social worker. They were social work assistant at the time, and I was just dumbstruck because the fact that someone did recognize me on the underground was a big thing in the first place, with the fact that they then remembered that and said, wow, you taught me how to deal with. They never dealt with someone with the visual impairment before. They were making a few of the classic errors, it must be said, but rather than tell them off, I said, look, this is how you do it, and your client would appreciate this. And going forward, this is what you should do. And this is what I would recommend you do. They just about stuck them, and they said, I'm never, ever going to forget that. And I've mentioned it in one of my essays. So that was just wonderful.

SARAH:

Thank you. Daniel, I think that's a really important point. You have described co-production at its best, and I think that's what we should be striving for as educators in social work.

HAMEED:

I'm very proud. And I'm going to say this with great joy and pride. That we're very, very I've been privileged, first of all, to come and be part of spaces where we share our lived experience stories. And I'll just focus on one example, which is the residential that we have annually where students come together for the weekend. Some teaching takes place, but we as service users and carers come and share our lived experience. Also, we get involved with, supporting the academic staff with some of the teaching sessions. And one of the things that has come back positive from the students from our service user and carer involvement and engagement group, that they found it very useful, they found it very valuable. They gained a different kind of insight than what they would get from academic books, or from academic tutors or professionals that they hear from.

Because we say as it is, we speak from the heart. There is no theories around it. There's no, kind of academic reference. It is just like; this is my individual story. And it doesn't just come as a fact, it comes with emotions. It comes with challenges. It comes with sadness. It comes with joy. It comes with hope. It comes with helplessness. So, they can see that so many different things can happen during a service user going through a particular crisis or being a carer and looking after someone they love and the challenges they face in the crisis. So overall, the lived experience element definitely gives students a wider insight into the real lives of real people on a real day, and the real challenges they face when it comes to dealing with traumas, crises, difficult times, and why it's important for social workers to have empathy, kindness, compassion and be anti-discriminatory, be anti-oppressive and promote inclusive and social justice.

SARAH:

Thank you so much for that, Hameed. And it's just hearing you talk about the reality of people's experiences and how that's so important for students to understand and how impactful that is, really highlights why we should definitely be hearing from people with lived experience when assessing students.

So, thinking forwards, looking forwards, I wonder what you think are the best ways that service users and carers can be involved in assessing students, when they're on their practice placements?

DANIEL:

In short, communication keep communicating with us as people with lived experience to unbox that a little bit, basically, if a student has a problem, a question, a scenario, or whatever else, they shouldn't just be trying to solve it on their own, or they shouldn't just be going back to their practice educator and say, what would the person with lived experience say about this?

The practice educator will be able to give them a practice educator’s answer. They'll be able to go on to YouTube and find a resource, because YouTube has a resource for everything that might give them the answer. There'll be something on an online reference library that can also give them the answer, there might also be something in professor So-and-so’s highly rated, very expensive, textbook. And whilst professor, so-and-so might be an absolute expert in his field, Professor so-and-so or YouTube or the internet or the practice educator is not us. They don't have the lived experience, or they're not me with my visual impairments. They're not my parents with their health conditions. They're not my upstairs neighbour with her three kids in a one-bedroom flat talking to us and be able to sort of have that first-hand experience, I think is really, really, really important. So yeah, going forward. Do that, keep the customer first if you like, or perhaps in social work parlance, a person centred approach.

SARAH:

Thinking about students who are on their social work placements and practice educators who are assessing them. What's one piece of advice you would give those practice educators in ways in which they can make sure the service users and carers are more involved in assessing their students?

HAMEED:

It's a very good question. In placements, there will be, people with lived experience, service uses and carers that the social work student is working with on a daily basis.

Practice educators can involve them to gain feedback, to help, to find out how the students are doing, what students can do better, what students have done better. And I like to call it the PIP model. They should receive and encourage service using carers to give them positive feedback, areas of improvement and then finish with a positive of one thing that they learned and could go forward. They should be more like ending on a positive for both parties to service users and social work students. They can also involve them in terms of when they do observations. Encourage and ask if the service users would like to help and support in observing to gain some feedback, to give feedback to the social work student, because there's academic feedback, there's practitioner feedback, but service users will give feedback what they felt it would be like, or they felt like being a service user, receiving.

I will say for myself that I need that service user- social worker chemistry to know that they that they're going to click with the service user, that they're going to do the best for the service user. And so it feels they can trust. Therefore, service users can give that that kind of additional, deeper feedback, what they felt the social worker did to make the service user feel comfortable, safe trust, be able to trust them. And in terms of engagement on a long term, thank you.

SARAH:

Well, Hameed and Daniel, I want to thank you for your insights today on not only why we should be working with people lived experience in the assessment of students on placement, but also some good guidance on how we should be doing it and what I've heard most in the conversations is about the importance of co-production and valuing the different perspectives of people when we're working with students. So, thank you.