Developing a Multi-placement Opportunity in a Human Service Agency
Keywords:
Social work, Social work placements, Field education, SupervisionAbstract
The human services sector is under increasing pressure to deliver services to clients, improve social justice outcomes, and host social work students on field placements – all within the limited human, financial, and organisational resources of the agency. This article outlines how a community housing organisation and a university in Queensland collaborated to support social justice outcomes while concurrently meeting the learning needs of social work students on placement. This article, jointly authored by the agency and university, discusses the organic development and goodwill between the field education team and the housing agency to support and shape practice. This collaboration has used Kolb’s (1984) learning cycle as a framework to guide the project team reflection and knowledge creation. The team adopted this process of reflection to illustrate the importance of relationship and collaboration in working together to develop goals and meet challenges in field placement and agency demands. The use of collaborative inquiry has also been included to illustrate the development of the working relationship.
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