Reflexivity and participation in communities

Planning and delivery of the teaching module and the assessment of the students were co-produced between social work academics, students and the group of service users. 

Before introducing the service-led assessment, the Director of the SAOL Project and the university lecturer agreed to design and deliver the module. The already established partnership between the service and the university lecturer and the direct involvement of the Director of the service in the provision of the module greatly facilitated the process.

Following discussion, it was agreed that conducting research on the process would provide much-needed insight and service users themselves wanted the process to be recorded in some way. It was their view that writing about their involvement might have a better chance of influencing social work education in the future, and most of them were motivated to help social workers to understand drug use and its impact on service users (Loughran and Broderick, 2017).

Brainstorming, initial discussions, and decision-making took place prior to the delivery to agree on the content of teaching, which included lectures on: 

• Poverty and Life Course Perspectives on Addiction
• Domestic Violence, Child Protection and Addiction
• Working in Partnership: Using a Trauma-Informed Approach to Addiction

A core aspect of the curriculum focused on the concepts of empathy, compassion and trauma as experienced by service users in the context of their growing up, parenting, adult lives, and environmental and social factors that helped explain their problems with addictions. 

Service users then designed a case study reflecting their own experience for use in teaching with students. This presented issues of the cycle of abuse and addiction and how this could be broken. For example, this included strategies for working with parents and children at risk. Importantly, these issues were placed in wider contexts, such as societal bias, stigma, shame, use of language, power and control, and labelling. It was emphasised that preventative approaches were necessary if harm and risk were to be addressed.

Student assessment

The student's learning is assessed using a written assignment based on the case study developed by the service users and a reflective group video project: students make a 5–10-minute video describing their key learning. 

The written assignment is co-graded by the social work academic module coordinator and the Director of the NGO. The video assignment is co-graded by the social work academic module coordinator and the service users. A feedback workshop is also convened between the service users and the social work students.

Links to: Service user integration into social work education: lessons learned from Nordic participatory action projects - PubMed (nih.gov)

References: Loughran, H., & McCann, M. E. (2015). Employing community participative research methods to advance service user collaboration in social work research. The British Journal of Social Work, 45(2), 705-723. https://doi.org/10.1093/bjsw/bct133

Loughran, H. & Broderick, G. (2017) From service-user to social work examiner: not a bridge too far, Social Work Education, 36:2, 188-202, DOI: 10.1080/02615479.2016.1268592