Voices and visions: collaborating for improved third sector social work student placements

Project planning is full of decisions to make. What partners do you need? What will success look like? How responsive can your plan be to new information? The list goes on; and it’s something we are really familiar with in our Iriss work. Despite familiarity, drawing a boundary around a project, and a project output, is not always easy - particularly in a piece of work like Voices and Visions, where participants have routinely shared detailed perspectives with us.

“I wanted that first placement to be something that I would be like ‘okay is social work the right career for me, is this the right job for me?"  - Reflection from an early career social worker on their third sector placement.

‘I learned a lot, but it wasn’t what I expected it to be’ is the message we’ve heard loudest from the students and recently workers we’ve been speaking with recently about their placement experiences.  

There’s a lot of work that goes into preparing to host a social work student on placement in a third sector organisation, from communicating with universities, meeting with students and their tutors, to ensuring students have access to the IT systems they need when they start. Third Sector Organisations (TSOs) are busy preparing before a student arrives. 

Having been working on Voice and Visions for nearly six months, it is safe to say we have heard a lot about the third sector social work student placement world; from third sector representatives, link workers, practice educators and people in the university world. Thank you so much to those who have lent their experiences to this project so far. 

But, we still have time for more! We are next meeting online on 23rd September, and we’d love to see you there. You can sign up here https://forms.office.com/e/8nnahMV4Q0. 

And we are off! Earlier this week, we had our first Voices and Visions online session. We were delighted to welcome so many representatives from third sector organisations who are currently, or who are planning to host social work student placements. We wanted to listen, and to hear broadly about different experiences, and to begin to unpick what’s involved for third sector organisations when they host a social work student placement.

Along with our project partner, People Know How, we are beginning to look at social work student placements in the third sector; how they are now, and building a vision for the future.