Spoken language interpreters in social work

- Social workers regularly work with individuals, families and groups where there is no shared language - Professional interpreting services can help to overcome language barriers and enable people to access and engage with services - People who require interpreters may be discriminated against and can face barriers when accessing services - Serious Case Inquiries – that investigate into the deaths and injuries of children – have highlighted the importance of spoken language interpreters in social work - Ad hoc arrangements in interpreting exist and the availability of skilled interpreters is an issu

Peri-natal evaluation: Maternal mental wellbeing, Quarriers Ruchazie

First paragraph: The peri-natal service at Quarriers was formally established in 2017 with funding from Comic Relief and the Tampon Tax Fund. During this period, the service has supported 371 individuals, including mums, dads, children and other significant family members. The service offers a wide variety of activities designed to support the mental health and wellbeing of the individuals who attend. Since 2017, Quarriers have delivered one-to- one sessions with women, provided 9 post-natal groups, 1 antenatal group as part of a pilot, and a drop in service that has been supporting 13 mothers and babies and will this year move towards a peer model support group. The centre also offers a baby massage group, which since 2017 has been delivered to 47 mothers and babies, with 3 fathers taking part. Additionally, all families accessing the service are encouraged to attend activities such as Growing Together, Book Bug and Funday Monday, if they wish

Ruchazie Family Centre - Evaluation, Year 2 Report 2017

In 2014 Quarriers were funded by the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) to extend their work at the Ruchazie Family Centre to engage more widely with parents/carers and their children. The University of Stirling was commissioned in 2015 to evaluate the programme between 2015-2019. This report is based on findings from our work in the second year of the evaluation

Quarriers Ruchazie Family Resource Centre Evaluation

The primary purpose of the evaluation was to determine to what extent the service has achieved its aim to 'work with families to overcome their difficulties, and achieve a more balanced family life' (Quarriers, 2017). The evaluation aimed to: 1) ascertain the views and experiences of families, practitioners about the nursery provision and family support services offered at the Centre; how well it works and the challenges associated; 2) explore the extent to which the Ruchazie Project's family support has made a difference to children, parents and caregivers; 3) focus on the preventative nature of the service and provide comment on the extent to which the service supports children to achieve their developmental milestones; improves children's physical and emotional well-being; builds parenting skills and improving parents' relationships with children; builds parent/carer's resilience to manage adversity; 4) consider children's transitions from the Ruchazie nursery to a 'mainstream' nursery provision

Towards best practice in educating and supporting separated children in Scotland: Executive Summary

This research forms part of the project: Towards Best Practice in Educating Separated Children in Scotland (16-18). The project’s goals were threefold: to assess the educational and well-being needs of separated children in Scotland (aged 16-18 years), consider how the “ESOL 16+” Programme (English for Speakers of Other Languages) at Glasgow Clyde College and its partners are meeting these needs inside and outside the classroom, and compare it to international good practice

Ruchazie Family Centre - Evaluation, Year 1 Report 2015-2016

In 2014 the Quarriers were funded by the Big Lottery Fund (BLF) to extend their work at the Ruchazie family centre to engage more widely with parents/carers and their children. The University of Stirling was commissioned in 2015 to evaluate the programme between 2015-2019. This report is based on our initial findings from our work in the first year of the evaluation programme

Listening to care experienced young people and creating audio-bites for social work education

It can be challenging to incorporate young people’s voices into social work pedagogy even though service user involvement is an essential part of social work education. Technological advances present new ways to involve service users and overcome barriers to participation. The purpose of this research was to explore service user involvement amongst young people by developing an audio resource for a qualifying social work programme in Scotland. We used a co-production methodology to create eight audio-bites based on interviews with four care-experienced people, aged 14–19, about their involvement with social work. We share key findings from the interviews, about the young people’s involvement with social work and about being ‘subjects’ of statutory recording practices and processes, such as chronologies and Child’s Plans. We discuss how the audio-bites were used in teaching and present feedback from students and lecturers about their use. We argue that the audio-bites promote authentic learning as they depict real life practice situations, and help students to develop listening and reflection skills that will inform their preparation for practice with children and young people

Participatory research with women in the perinatal period: Considerations for reflexive, community-oriented and power-sensitive research practices

This article provides an account of using reflexive participatory methods including study advisory group membership to evaluate a perinatal wellbeing service in an economically deprived area of Scotland. There is little qualitative research that explores the experiences of women accessing perinatal mental health services. This article draws on feminist values and narrative theory to explore the practice, process and ethics of using participatory methods with women in the perinatal period. We explore the blurring of intervention and research group boundaries to consider the service and study advisory group as a space which provided the conditions for collective care and re-storying the self. We explore the study advisory group as an extension of the intervention itself, highlighting the role of community in research practices and in interventions, for women who experience perinatal mental health difficulties. We reflect on the ‘sticky’ practice of navigating epistemic and decision-making power in participatory research, including the dual positionalities of being two academic researchers who come to research with therapeutic training in counselling, psychotherapy and social work. We call for reflexive, community-oriented and flexible approaches when using participatory methods with populations that might be considered vulnerable, marginalised or stigmatised

Service user and carer representation: exploring barriers to participation

First paragraph: UNITY is the University of Stirling service user and carers’ (SUAC) social work involvement group. UNITY has been established for over 10 years and members contribute to the design and delivery of the qualifying social work programmes and more recently have contributed to the Nursing programmes. In this article the term service user refers to people who have or continue to use health and social care services; carers refer to people who carry out a caring role for family members or friends in an unpaid capacity currently or formerly

Learning in and beyond the classroom: Communities of practice in education support for separated children

Separated children, seeking protection in a new country unaccompanied by parents or customary caregivers, have the right to education yet many face difficulties accessing appropriate provision. We analysed data from Scotland across different types of provision: one specialist programme for separated children and four areas providing a mixture of mainstream and adapted classes. Drawing on situated learning theory and the concept of communities of practice, we argue that supporting these learners requires collaborations with them and across professional boundaries. While highly effective communities of practice can and do develop organically, a coordinated approach to expanding them could bring additional benefits.Output Status: Forthcoming/Available Onlin