‘Not easily put into a box’: constructing professional identity

Researching the interplay between social work students' personal and professional identities, I found that, in talking about becoming professionals, students drew on a wide range of discourses. Three common usages of the term ‘professional identity’ are explored here: it can be thought of in relation to desired traits; it can also be used in a collective sense to convey the ‘identity of the profession’. Taking a more subjective approach, professional identity can be regarded as a process in which each individual comes to have a sense of themselves as a social worker. I argue that the variations in students' talk reflect a wide range of cultural understandings that are prevalent within the social work community and society in general, and conclude that professional identity is more complicated than adopting certain traits or values, or even demonstrating competence. The different meanings of professional identity all have something to offer, providing resources for students as they construct themselves as social workers. This is important for social work education because it acknowledges the dynamic nature of professional identity, highlights the difficult identity work which each student must undertake, and prompts us to consider how this process might best be supported

Developing Advanced Practitioners in Mental Health Social Work : Pedagogical Considerations

Advanced social work practitioners in mental health services daily face the challenges of working alongside the more powerful professions of psychiatry and psychology. Advanced post-qualifying programmes in mental health social work equip practitioners with the knowledge, skills and expertise to confidently work alongside both psychiatrists and clinical psychologists in multi-disciplinary teams. This includes training in empirical research methods, which are used to develop the evidence base for psychiatry and psychology, although social work practitioners find this particularly challenging. This paper explores the importance of research methods teaching in the development of advanced practitioners in mental health social work. Using learning theory to explore possible reasons why practitioners find it so difficult, it offers some solutions which may enhance the learning and teaching of research methodology to experienced social worker

Evaluating the impact of post-qualifying social work education.

Post-qualifying awards in social work are well established within the continuing professional development agenda for qualified social workers in the UK. The evaluation of education and training should be an integral part of this agenda because it is important to ensure that programmes continue to meet standards of delivery, are successful in meeting their aims and objectives and are making an impact on practice. However, there is limited amount of published work on the evaluation of post-qualifying social work education, with studies often focusing on programme delivery rather than on their impact on practice. This paper explores evaluative work within the current post-qualifying social work framework, and discusses the results of an evaluation of the Vulnerable Adults and Community Care Practice programme, a specialist post-qualifying social work education programme run by a UK university, as an example of an evaluation of the impact on practice. The results indicate positive evidence of impact on practice and demonstrate examples of how the programme has had a direct effect on individuals, teams, organisations and on people who use services

Intersectional impact of multiple identities on social work education in the UK

This document is the Accepted Manuscript version of the following article: Ben Chi-pun Liu, ‘Intersectional impact of multiple identities on social work education in the UK’, Journal of Social Work, Vol 17(2): 226-242, March 2017. © 2016 The Author(s). DOI to the published version: 10.1177/1468017316637220. Reprinted by permission of SAGE Publications.Summary: The study reviews the records of 671 social work students and graduates including the seven intakes from the first cohort in 2003/2004 to the intake in 2010/2011 to examine the interacting effect of learning difficulties, ethnicity and gender on the completion of social work training at a university in the South East of England. Findings: Among the students, 79.9% of them were female, 50.1% were black, 27.9% white, 10.7% Asian and 11.3% other ethnicities. A majority of students did not report any disability. Among those who did (n ¼ 84), 52.3% (n ¼ 44) reported a learning difficulty.The percentage of students who have successfully completed the training is 76.4%, a completion rate that is comparable to the UK’s national figure. Having controlled the confounding variables, hierarchical logistic regression identified the risk factor for dropoutfrom undergraduate social work programme as black female students with learning difficulties (odds ratio ¼ 0.100, 95% confidence interval ¼ 0.012–0.862, p < 0.05). Findings suggested that students with multiplicity of identities, i.e. being black and female and with a learning difficulty, have a lower probability to complete the programme successfully. Applications: Strategies for tackling the intersecting disadvantages of race, gender and disabilities in social work training should embrace three principles: providing continuous support, focusing on how the support is provided and addressing contextual and structural barriers.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Mind the gap!: Students' Understanding and Application of Social Work Values

This paper discusses a research project that explored the development of student social workers' values during the first year of professional education at one Scottish university. Questionnaires, based on a vignette, and focus groups established baseline information at the outset of the study. These methods were reapplied a year later to identify the extent to which students' values framework had developed, and the factors that had supported this. The study revealed that, by the end of that year, students could both identify and apply values to support them in their work with individuals to a greater extent than they could those to help them challenge structural discrimination. The study also highlighted the need for university-based teaching, and practice learning experiences, to provide more opportunities for reflection and discussion to support the development of values in student social workers

Mind the gap!: Students' Understanding and Application of Social Work Values

This paper discusses a research project that explored the development of student social workers' values during the first year of professional education at one Scottish university. Questionnaires, based on a vignette, and focus groups established baseline information at the outset of the study. These methods were reapplied a year later to identify the extent to which students' values framework had developed, and the factors that had supported this. The study revealed that, by the end of that year, students could both identify and apply values to support them in their work with individuals to a greater extent than they could those to help them challenge structural discrimination. The study also highlighted the need for university-based teaching, and practice learning experiences, to provide more opportunities for reflection and discussion to support the development of values in student social workers

Reflections from the ‘frontline’: social workers' experiences of post-qualifying child care training and their current work practices in the new children's services

In the context of current developments in children's services in the UK and increased emphasis on workforce development, the authors describe a survey of successful completers of a Post-qualifying (PQ) Child Care Award Programme, one of 18 such programmes in England that ran between 2001 and 2006/7. The survey's aims were twofold: first, to gather the respondents' overall evaluations of their PQ training and information about their past and current work circumstances; and second, to explore their knowledge and opinions on the latest developments in children's services in relation to their own work practices. The findings from the survey are outlined under four themes, which are then discussed in relation to other relevant studies, reviews on the role and tasks of social workers and current developments associated with the Every Child Matters agenda and the integrated workforce. Concerns are raised about whether social work professionalism is being effectively utilised within the current children's services arrangements