Including Family Carers: Adding Value and Impact to Research

As family carers we are not a homongeneous group but come in all shapes and sizes, and play an invaluable role in society. We have a variety of experiences, and expertise in the needs of the person or people we care for or have cared for as well as our own experiences of being carers. Across the diverse group of carers and caring situations, we each have our own individual voice which may differ from that of the person we care for. Yet, in research studies our voices are sometimes excluded or only sought when the cared for person is unable to give their own views. The focus on services or the cared for person can sometimes ignore the experience and expertise carers bring to an issue. Often the symbiotic nature of the caring relationship is not recognised; so when the focus is on interventions for the cared for person the resulting impact on their carers is overlooked. There is no doubt that more research is needed on the role, needs and support for carers. But ther is also no doubt that the voice of carers needs to be captured across all health and social care studies even when the focus is on the cared for person. This report, from a workshop organised by the Independent Advisory Group on Carers and the NIHR School for Social Care Research, highlights the pivotal role carers play in the effectiveness of future health and social care-related research. Carers can be valuable partners, providing unique inputs into all stages of research design, from forming the research question to the methodology, analysis and in sharing the findings. Our voice as carers needs to become an integral part of all health or social care-related research studies. There are actions that research funders, research teams, the health and social care sectors, and carers can take to make this happen. This report highlights some of these but it is important that actions follow. The first step is to recognise carers as a distinct, diverse and valuable group in research. We welcome positive steps being taken to achieve the priorities set out in this report

Ultrafast Electric Field-induced Phase Transition in Bulk Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3 under High Intensity Terahertz Irradiation

“This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of a Published Work that appeared in final form in ACS Photonics, copyright © American Chemical Society after peer review and technical editing by the publisher. To access the final edited and published work see https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acsphotonics.0c01559”Ultrafast polarization switching is being considered for the next generation of ferroelectric based devices. Recently, the dynamics of the field-induced transitions associated with this switching have been difficult to explore, due to technological limitations. The advent of terahertz (THz) technology has now allowed for the study of these dynamic processes on the picosecond (ps) scale. In this paper, intense terahertz (THz) pulses were used as a high-frequency electric field to investigate ultrafast switching in the relaxor ferroelectric, Bi0.5Na0.5TiO3. Transient atomic-scale responses, which were evident as changes in reflectivity, were captured by THz probing. The high energy THz pulses induce an increase in reflectivity, associated with an ultrafast field-induced phase transition from a weakly polar phase (Cc) to a strongly polar phase (R3c) within 20 ps at 200 K. This phase transition was confirmed using X-ray powder diffraction and by electrical measurements which showed a decrease in the frequency dispersion of relative permittivity at low frequencies

Selecting social work students:lessons from research in Scotland

The issue of selection of students to social work programmes is one that remains highly contested. While it is clear that there is no single way of choosing the next generation of social work students, nevertheless, there are a number of strongly held beliefs about what ‘best practice’ means in this fraught field. These can be difficult to challenge, and even harder to shift, in spite of contrary evidence. This paper presents research conducted in Scotland in 2016 as part of the Scottish Government-sponsored Review of Social Work Education. The research set out to consider what selection processes were being used in Scotland and why; more fundamentally, it sought to explore the views of those involved in social work education alongside evidence about the outcomes of the selection processes (that is, data on student retention and success). The article concludes that while there is little evidence that one method of selection to social work programmes is intrinsically better than another, issues of fairness and transparency in selection, as well as diversity, remain pressing

The sustainability of Egan’s Skilled Helper Model in students’ social work practice

This paper investigates the nature of students’ learning of the Egan Skilled Helper model in enabling them to develop collaborative communication skills which place service-users at the centre of decision making. The paper is a follow-up to an earlier paper which found that the Egan model was helpful to students as a communication and problem management tool and that they had transferred their learning into practice. The current study involves seven students from the first study and examines whether their knowledge and skills from learning the model in year one have been sustained two years later during their third year practice placement. A key finding is that participants were continuing to use most stages of the model (with the exception of challenging skills) with service-users in a variety of settings. Further findings are that the model is still useful in situations where goals are set by social workers rather than by service-users; and that it is the utilisation of role-play when learning the model which most embeds skills. The implications of these findings for skills training are discussed together with suggestions for further focus

Ready for Qualified Practice? A Comparative Study of Capability for Critical Reflection and Analysis of MA Social Work and MA Step Up to Social Work Students at the End of Second Placement

Social Work education is faced with substantial changes. New programmes like Step Up to Social Work have emerged and were evaluated in relation to intake, programme development and subjective student experiences. The lack of evidence on outcomes of such programmes was addressed in this study. In a comparative study of a MA in Social Work and a MA in Step Up to Social Work, the authors analysed students' capability to critically reflect on and analyse social work practice scenarios at the end of their final placement at one university. The PCF domain ‘Critical Reflection and Analysis’ was operationalised and the study design employed qualitative and quantitative data analysis. Demographic data, academic marks achieved during social work education and written reflections on case vignettes from the two programmes were analysed statistically. The findings suggest that, while there are some differences in outcomes between the programmes, they are not statistically significant. However, reflections on children and family vignettes were significantly better (U = 185, p=0.008). Thematic analysis revealed considerable variation in the levels of curiosity and critical thinking and that respondents who framed their answers with reference to policy guidance, theory and research often extended their critical thinking

Using visual methodology: Social work student's perceptions of practice and the impact on practice educators.

This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Practice: Social Work in Action on 21-6-18, available online: https://doi.org/10.1080/09503153.2018.1476477Practice learning within social work education plays a significant part in students’ educational journey. Little is understood about the emotional climate of placements. This paper presents a small scale qualitative study of 13 social work students’ perceptions of their relationship with a practice educator (PE) and 6 PE’s perceptions of these emotional experiences. Visual methodology was employed over a two-phased research project, first social work students were asked to draw an image of what they thought practice education looked like, phase two used photo eliciation, PEs were then asked to explore the meaning of these images. Results demonstrated that social work students focused on their own professional discourse, the identity of PEs, power relationship and dynamics between themselves and PEs, the disjointed journey and practice education in its entirity. Whilst the PEs shared their personal views of practice education and reflected on this, both groups had a shared understanding of practice education including its values and frustrations. Keywords: social work placements, visual methodology, practice educator