Monitoring and Evaluation

People who use services and carers want to know if their involvement in social work education is making a difference. The outcomes they are interested in include changes in the attitudes, values and practice of social work students and educators. They expect these changes to impact on future practice and prevent other people who use services from having negative experiences. They also want to know whether new students find themselves able to live out their values and put into practice what they have learned when they enter the social work profession. In return for involvement of service users and carers in social work programmes, universities and colleges should therefore consider how they can evaluate the effectiveness of such involvement as part of their measurement of the effectiveness of their teaching. This is also a challenge for managers and trainers in social work services themselves.

What the Experts Say

“This willingness for all those involved to work towards a common structure where I and those like me would see actual change from our involvement would be different from the other areas of consultation I and others have been involved with.…We would see a definite result from our involvement and consultation and we would all be aware of the challenges and tasks which lay ahead. This was for me a main influence in my deciding to join the Group.”

—John Dow, Chair of Scottish Voices, speaking about the University of Dundee User and Carer Group

“How de we ensure that after qualification the’ new social workers’ are able/allowed to continue the practice they learnt/gained at the Universities?”

—John Dow and Jim Sinclair

Top Tip: People who use services and carers expect their input to have an impact. Teaching organisations should evaluate whether involvement:

• Increases students’ understanding of non-discriminatory attitudes
• Enables students to understand the difference they can make to a person’s life
• Encourages students to develop positive and respectful practices

From Wider Research

Positive impact will follow from good practice in involvement. Marginal involvement is unlikely to produce significant change. Therefore:

• Ensure people who use services and carers are co-creators of practice change
• Make optimum use of their insights, energy and imagination in their contributions to student learning
• Evaluate the impact of such learning on student attitudes, knowledge and understanding of practice

Good Practice Examples

The User and Carer From established under Changing Lives has developed and published a set of Principles and Standards of Citizen Leadership which explain the dimensions of real engagement. They make it clear that engagement has benefits in itself but should also be for a wider purpose, to make things better for others and to challenge powerlessness and inequality.

Principles of Citizen Leadership

1. Potential
   Everyone should have their leadership potential recognised
2. Development
   People’s leadership potential can only be fulfilled through opportunities for development
3. Early Involvement
   People who use services and carers must be involved at all stages of developing and delivering services
4. Person-Centred
   Everyone is an individual and should be helped to show leadership in the way that suits them best
5. Information
   People need information that is clear to them and they need it in plenty of time
6. Equality
   People use their leadership skills to challenge inequality in services and wider society
7. Control Through Partnership
   Citizen Leadership enables people to have more control over their own services, through working in partnership with those services
8. Wider Benefit
   Citizen Leadership is for the benefit of other people who use services as well as yourself

The foregoing list is derived from Citizen Leadership Principles & Standards Paper, The Scottish Government, Edinburgh 2008.

Glasgow School of Social Work is developing an evaluation tool to use after every input from service users and carers so that lessons can be learned for supporting future involvement.

Action

Develop a framework for evaluating the impact of engagement on both learning and practice. Engage people who use services and carers in the evaluation and ensure that those who participate in learning receive feedback on the results.

Further Information

IRISS (formerly SIESWE), 2004. Scottish Voices: Service Users and Carers at the Heart of Social Work Education – a conference report.