Social Work Practice Learning Opportunities. (Student Placements)
All students undertaking their social work training leading to a BA (Hons) in Social work and those undertaking the MSC/Post Graduate route are required to complete a range of Practice learning. Social work students are now required to spend 200 days in practice learning throughout their training, 160 of these must be spent in supervised direct practice in service delivery settings.
The Robert Gordon University has Service Level Agreements in place with a wide and varied range of social work agencies, in the statutory, voluntary and private sector, which provide our social work students with practice learning opportunities. The majority of these opportunities are in the North East of Scotland, incorporating Aberdeen City, Aberdeenshire, Moray, Highland, Western Isles, Shetland and Orkney. However due to the locality of many of our Distance Learning students we have agreements with a range of settings throughout the United Kingdom. We also have some opportunities for Social Work students to undertake practice learning in a range of European settings.
Practice Learning Co-ordinators within the Applied School of Social Studies negotiate with these settings to secure offers for student placements and are thereafter involved in the matching process between the setting and the social work student.
We have access to a wide variety of practice learning opportunities covering all service user groupings within residential, day and field work services. For example the opportunity exists to gain practice experience with statutory services such as child care, criminal justice, and care management; with the voluntary sector working with people with disabilities, people with mental health issues, and homeless people, people with addictions; and in the private sector working with older people, people with disabilities and a number of organisations providing advocacy and support.
Whilst social work students are on placement they will be supervised by a Practice Teacher and if applicable a Link Supervisor, (see below for clarification of Practice Teacher, Link Supervisor and Student roles within Practice Learning) As well as assessing the student's performance on placement the Practice Teacher will also aim to ensure sufficient learning opportunities and help the student integrate theory and practice.
Within the School of Applied Social Studies we work hard with our agency partners to ensure students have a range of valuable practice learning experiences to prepare and equip them with the necessary skills to enable them to join the social work profession.
If you have any queries regarding practice learning please contact
Sheila Slesser : e-mail s.slesser@rgu.ac.uk or Tel: 01224 263224
Isobel Townsend : e-mail i.townsend@rgu.ac.uk or Tel: 01224 263215
