2. Introduction

These guidelines have been developed as part of the project, Innovation by supporting reflexivity and participation (INORP): Strengthening education and professionalisation of social work on the border of other professions, co-financed by EU funds under the Erasmus+ K203-CAC1B7D2 strategic partnership for innovation for the period 2020-2023. The project partners include: Charles University (Czech Republic) -Project Coordinator; Gent University (Belgium); Helsingin Yliopisto (Finland); University College Dublin (Ireland) and Cooperativa De Ensino Superior De Serviço Social (Portugal). The Association Of Educators In Social Work (ASVSP) is an associate partner. The INORP project aims to develop methodologies to strengthen the skills and abilities of all stakeholders involved in or allied to the social work profession including academics, teachers, students, stakeholders from various group identities, including social and health, or professional and para-professional, in relation to using participatory and inclusive approaches to engage with services users and to promote reflexively in various areas of social work.

As part of this project the partners are exploring service practice and research in the different partner countries to compare and describe examples of good practice in social work through the lens of curricula and publications. Together, students, academics and teachers from each partner have prepared small case studies. After the completion of the first Intellectual Output (O1) (see below) partners including academics, teachers and students came together in Dublin at the end of October 2021 for a five day Intensive Programme of learning, presentation, sharing and discussion of relevant ideas. All of the previous work of the project partners has been used to inform these guidelines, which have been prepared by the team at UCD who include, Prof Jim Campbell, Dr Sarah Donnelly and Dr Bláíthín Gallagher.

The content and structure of these methodological guidelines has very much been informed by and builds on Intellectual Output 1 (O1) of the INORP project, A Framework for analysing and reflecting on modes of services user participation in social work: A comparative perspective. This review of the literature revealed the types of participatory approaches used in the partner countries of Belgium, Czech Republic, Finland, Ireland, and Portugal in in the fields of health and social care. The document revealed considerable variations in the level of research and publications across the countries. For example, there was a long history of educational and research engagement in Finland and Belgium with these issues, to a lesser extent in Portugal and the Czech Republic. In Ireland, there has been recent, growing interest in the field. There appear to be several reasons for such variation, including the level of political and policy drivers and the stage at which social work had become professionalised in countries, factors that will have to be followed up in the course of this project. Even where there were positive intentions to deliver services, education and research that considered the views of service users, there was evidence that governments, organisations and professionals often resisted change or assumed tokenistic approaches, which revealed (or rather obscured) issues of power and power imbalance. These are described and analysed in Diagram 1 of O1.