The Benefits

Engagement with people who use services and carers should benefit everyone – educators, students and service users and carers themselves. It should lead ultimately to improved practice. This section summarises the benefits of engagement for improving learning and practice.

“How to work with people using services, carers, professional colleagues and volunteers and work closely in partnership with them is central to standards in social work education.”

—The Scottish Executive 2003, p. 20

“The benefits of working with people who use services and carers have been many. They bring a fresh perspective to the work that we do and suggest things that often we haven’t considered because we have been so closely involved in the development or delivery of something.”

—Lecturer in Social Work

What the Experts Say

“Some of the most powerful things people learn are from service users and carers.”
“Remember carers are a knowledge resource for you.”

—SUCIG members

Findings from Local Research

One HEI respondent saw service user and carer involvement as a “crucial element of student learning and course design” and reported that “it enhances the student experience if it is planned, purposeful, relevant and progressive”. Another found it a privilege to meet and work with service users and carers in the production of learning materials and wrote that service user and carer involvement in “influencing service delivery and professional education is vital”. A third of FEIs commented on the benefits for students’ learning that comes from service user and/or carer involvement. One respondent commented that “students learn much more from this type of engagement than any other”.

All the service users and carers interviewed commented that through service user and carer involvement, students would gain insight and it would ultimately improve services if there was more understanding from workers. As one carer stated:

“There would be a whole generation coming out who would understand.”

—Carer, South East

The benefits of involvement for institutions were agreed to be: enhancing learning, challenging assumptions, hearing and valuing people who use services and carers and improving services.

Top Tip: Everyone’s learning can benefit from service user and carer
engagement:

• People who use services and students can learn together
• Values can be put into practice
• Future relationships can be modeled
• Assumptions are challenged and anti-discrimination is encouraged, e.g. not all carers are the same

“The assumption that a carer is a carer is a carer is ridiculous.”

—Carer, West of Scotland

Messages from Wider Research

Practice benefits include:

• It is consistent with the Scottish Social Services Council Codes of Practice
• It is mandated by The Framework for Social Work Education in Scotland (The Scottish Executive, 2003)
• It is consistent with social work values
• It links with the development of anti-oppressive and empowering practice (Dominelli, 1996; Molyneux and Irvine, 2004, p. 295)
• It models expected social work and social care practice
• It should lead to improved future services

Educational benefits include:

• The development of transferable skills in developing participation, inclusiveness, respect for users’ points of view and trust (Waterson and Morris, 2005)
• The acquisition of core skills such as active listening (Waterson and Morris, 2005), interpersonal skills and knowledge of systems to provide practical help (Molyneux and Irvine, 2004, p. 295)
• The development of theoretical understanding
• Encouraging students to adopt a whole person approach to their practice

It’s not just students who benefit from the experience, service users and carers report positives too:

• Develops confidence
• Validates personal experiences
• Gain satisfaction from the fact they can make a difference
• Learn different perspectives

“We can learn from it and it gives us more knowledge.”

—Service user, West of Scotland

Action

Engagement with service users and carers is not optional for social work education. Map the benefits of involvement against the learning objectives of your programmes. Consider how greater engagement could enhance the quality of the learning experience.

Further Information

Dominelli L. (1996) Deprofessionalizing social work: anti-oppressive practice, competencies and postmodernism. British Journal of Social Work, 26 (1): 53-175.

Molyneux J. and Irvine J. (2004) Service user and carer involvement in social work training: a long and winding road? Social Work Education, 23 (3): 293-308.

The Scottish Executive (2003). The Framework for Social Work Education in Scotland.

Waterson J. and Morris K., 2005. Training in ‘social’ work: exploring issues of involving users in teaching on social work degree programmes. Social Work Education 24 (6) 653-675.