student social workers

Lack of statutory practice placements for students leaves newly qualified social workers struggling for jobs

A survey carried out by Community Care has found a chronic shortage of statutory practice placements for students in London. This article looks difficulties some student social workers have had in finding a placement, and the poor quality if some placements provided.

Practice Learning Qualification. PLQ(SS)

The Practice Learning Qualification (Social Services) is a suite of qualifications set at four different levels and aimed at supporting the learning of staff and students in the workplace.

The qualifications reflect the importance of practice learning throughout the workforce and enable those involved in supporting practice learning at all levels of their organisation to gain recognition for their knowledge and skills.

Culturally competent practice : you are what you eat

This learning object is one of a set of exercises and activities taken from the book 'Modern Social Work Practice' written by Mark Doel and Steven Shardlow. This activity is designed to sensitize students to cultural differences by understanding more about their own cultural inheritance. The student learns that cultural competence is not an absolute quality and that ‘culture’ is not something which is limited to certain groups, classes or races.

Endings : are we there yet?

This learning object is one of a set of exercises and activities taken from the book 'Modern Social Work Practice' written by Mark Doel and Steven Shardlow. This activity helps the student to consider the importance of endings in professional practice and how to make best use of them. Primarily, this is achieved by anticipating endings from the beginning of a piece of work, and by seeing endings as transitions; every exit is a new entrance.

Priorities : sticky moments

This learning object is one of a set of exercises and activities taken from the book 'Modern Social Work Practice' written by Mark Doel and Steven Shardlow. The purpose of this activity is to encourage students to think about how they make decisions when there are conflicting priorities. Too often, these kinds of decisions are made without an awareness of the knowledge, values and beliefs which underpin them. This activity makes these factors explicit and teaches students a framework which will help them to continue to review the way they make decisions.