Outcomes of social work placements.

What is it about?

What do social work organisations gain from hosting social work student placements? This paper draws on data from community and social service organisations to explore the benefits and costs of offering placements to social work students. Findings explore the mutually beneficial outcomes of student placements from organisational perspectives, as well as some of the costs involved. One particularly interesting benefit identified by participants was that placement supervision offered social work supervisors opportunities for their own professional development (e.g., revisiting social work theory, connected with social work academics, discussing ethical dilemmas, etc.).

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Why is it important?

Social Work qualifying courses typically involve compulsory field education placements as a central requirement for professional qualification. Yet in many locations, the human services sector is under-resourced and hosting students on placement is becoming increasingly difficult to support due to resource paucity.