Examples

A practitioner spoke of her experience as a student in a residential unit for older people with dementia. She observed that children frequently visited the unit and were sometimes witness to behaviours from the residents which may be inappropriate or unsettling, particularly depending on their age and stage. The practitioner used supervision to raise her concerns that the staff group may have become so accustomed to the behaviour of the residents that they were not alert to the needs of children who visited. The practice teacher encouraged her to undertake a project which assessed the "child friendliness" of the environment. She was able to make recommendations about having a private space for visiting, with toys available. She also reflected on the fact that children and young people would have questions about why their grandparent's presentation had changed. The older person's key worker would have valuable expertise about why a service user behaved in a certain way. She was able to consider ways which staff might offer age appropriate insight into the behaviour of the adult and how this could be communicated to children and young people.

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One group of practitioners reflected on the need for service users to receive the message from the student that they could establish a working relationship and provide a service irrespective of the reasons for the contact. For example, where the actions of the service user conflict with the values of the student. However, how they established this requires consideration. Practitioners discussed the need to reflect on unintended messages can be given in day to day contact. For example, in an attempt to show respect to a parent, a practitioner might offer to shake hands at the point of meeting. For some people this could be experienced as disrespectful dependent on age, gender or culture.

The practitioners identified that a balance needs to be achieved in the use of physical contact, and the student should be able to demonstrate that they can critically reflect on when it is appropriate and when it might not be.

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A student was involved in assessing parenting capacity of a service user with learning disabilities. The parent had support from a range of professionals and had established positive relationships with these workers over a significant period of time. The student's assessment was that while the parent was engaging this was not effecting change for the child. The student was not confident in challenging the assessment of other professionals for two reasons, that she was not yet qualified and she was new to the practice situation. Her practice teacher encouraged her to reflect on the child's day to day, lived experience and she did this in the form of a diary from the child's perspective. She then used the diary within the core group to refocus the discussion on the child and constructively challenge the view that support was effecting change for this child. The practice teacher identified that this tool could be used as a way to enable students to reflect on the situation of children across a range of ages and different needs.

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A student in a criminal justice setting was asked to undertake an assessment of a service user's offending behaviour. The student identified that the service user was a parent and that there was involvement with other parts of the social work service. Alongside the allocated worker from the children and families team the student made an assessment of the reasons for the offending and any impact this had on the child.The student identified that each worker had important information to share which would inform the assessment they were undertaking.

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One student attended a training event in relation to child care and protection. She then shared the learning from this with the team and designed a quiz to evaluate how the information had been received.

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