ABSTRACT
Service user and carer participation has become a global phenomenon that has a high priority within many government policy initiatives (Webb 2008). This participation needs to be considered within a context of political and social change. Societies are operating within a context of globalization, migration and social exclusion, with significant financial and resource constraints. Within the UK context, the involvement of service users and carers in all aspects of social work education, from development and planning to delivery, selection and assessment of students, has become relatively commonplace. These developments have emerged partly from guidance published by governments across all four jurisdictions in relation to the requirements for social work education as set out by the Department of Health (DH; 2002), Scottish Executive (2003) and the Northern Ireland Office (2003). Under the Care Standards Act (2000), the DH issued the Requirements for Social Work Training (DH 2002) followed by the National Occupational Standards for Social Work (DH 2002) and the Quality Assurance Agency subject benchmark statement for social work (DH 2000), all of which placed central importance on service user and carer involvement in the development and delivery of social work training. Leven (2004) described the initiative as follows:
An ambitious agenda in which the type of knowledge that service users and carers can impart is identified as a strong lever for improving social care … [it] recognizes that service users and carers are themselves experts in what would make for more control, choice and better quality in their everyday lives and in existing services.
(Leven 2004: 8) In order to support these developments and in recognition of their significance, higher education institutions in England were allocated a small grant of around £6,000 for three years in order to develop the necessary infrastructure required to support service user and carer participation (Leven 2004). User-led organizations such as Shaping Our Lives in England (Beresford et al. 2006) and Scottish Voices in Scotland (SIESWE 2004) played a crucial role in taking these developments forward. Similar requirements and developments took place across the other jurisdictions of the United Kingdom. For example, the Framework for Social Work Education in Scotland stated that institutions of higher education must set out ‘policies and procedures … [that] must include effective and appropriate ways of meeting the requirements of key stakeholders in social services … key stakeholders include people who use services, carers and employers’ (Scottish Executive 2003: 15). Similarly in Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Care Council stated: ‘The engagement of service users and carers in training is essential for students to reach an understanding of both the quality and nature of services required and the way in which they must be delivered’ (Harbison, cited in Duffy 2006: 5).