How have you been involved in student selection?
Every year a certain number of social care workers in Glasgow are selected by the Learning Support Department at Glasgow City Council’s Education and Social Work Service to study on the B.A. Hons. in Social Work. This year this was either at the Glasgow School or the Open University. As a carer I take part in the selection process and I am treated as an equal partner.
How do you prepare for this?
J. M. has us in for a preparatory meeting to go over questions and we give our input as to what we think it would be appropriate to ask the candidates. The interview panel has time to ask about eight questions so maybe two of ours might get included.
Transport and lunch are laid on. You’re brought in from the start and treated as a person. It’s not as if you’re stuck in a corner and the professionals are over there. It’s “Hi Rosemary, how’s things?”
How are you involved in selection?
I take part in the interview panel. There is not a right or wrong answer to the questions I ask, but I do think about the kind of answer I am expecting and I am looking to see whether the person is likely to be able to manage the course and benefit from it. I don’t want to set them up to fail. For example, I might ask what they would do if they went to a family in crisis where the mother has dementia and the carer is stressed. I hope they could think of a practical way they could assist the family.
The interview panel works as a team. At the end of the 20 minute interview we score them according to a set of criteria.
It means leaving the house at 8 in the morning and interviewing from 9 to 5. I was so tired at the end and I thought this is what full-time work again would be like!
J. texted me the next day and said thanks very much and that my input was appreciated.
What do you think of the process and your involvement in it?
I think it works well because what carers and service users have to look forward to in the next three years is a very good, academically able group of students who will be going out in Glasgow and can make services better. I would welcome any of them at my door. Carer and service users are being brought in to the selection process as stakeholders and partners.
J. gets in touch about every six months and asks after me and my family. About March he will contact me and ask if I will be available to help with selection during July.
I have been able to suggest other people who have got involved also.
I know that there are many other ways that you share your experience and perspective as a carer. Could you tell me about some of these?
I was invited to present my experience as a carer in Scotland at a conference in Birmingham organised by the Open University. It was an event to bring together good practice from across the four countries. It involved OU staff, service user and carers who shared their experience of service user and carer involvement in the education of social work students through the Open University. I was talking about how we do things in Scotland and people from England, Wales and Northern Ireland were talking about how different people deal with things. One of the things we talked about was ‘did you ever have a crisis in your life?’ and where it had been dealt with well and so on. There were lots of things to get people thinking about what was working or not.
I suggested the idea of a passport for good practice. There is lots of good practice and it needs to get passed around. It takes a day for us all to sit and talk about it but we need to get it out to people who have not heard it with their own ears.
Although I was there as a carer I had to put on my hat as Children’s Panel member because there were fascinated by what we do as Panel members. In England the Judge does what we do in the Panel room. So there was some good linking.
I travelled down with two of the Open University staff. Again I was treated with courtesy and respect, as an individual and an equal. It has been an awakening for me. I didn’t know much about the O.U. before but now I can suggest to service users and carers that they get in touch with them.
I also speak to doctors and nurses at my Carers Centre. They come and interview us and ask what’s good practice. And I’ve been invited to go to the Nautical College in March by the Head Tutor on the HND.
So we’re spreading the word a little and hopefully we can get other carers on board.
Yesterday there was a big conference for carers at Glasgow Caledonian University with lots of listening, talking and feedback from people all over Scotland. The Minister for Public Health was there and was very interested and all the comments are going to be collated for her.
Do you have a key message?
Professionals can learn from carers as carers are professionals!