Involving service users and carers in social work education
Who the guide is for
The guide is for everyone involved in educating and training social workers, even though they may be involved in different ways and for different reasons. The guide may be of particular interest and relevance to individuals and groups most directly involved in the degree. These are:
- service users and carers who are involved or interested in becoming involved;
- academic staff with day-to-day responsibility for service user and carer participation in the programme and their colleagues;
- staff in agencies that provide practice learning opportunities and participate in student assessments;
- students themselves;
- staff in the universities and the national bodies with management, quality assurance, and monitoring responsibilities relating to the degree.
The guide may also be of interest to groups and individuals providing social work postqualifying education and training or developing service users’ and carers’ participation in the training of other professionals such as nurses and doctors or in training social care workers. The principles and practicalities that it sets out also apply more widely to the involvement of service users and carers in designing, commissioning, delivering and monitoring services.