Duffy, Joe

This film is from a project which examines social work from the perspective of service users and carers across three countries, Northern Ireland, Slovenia and Spain. Social work students from Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland, the University of Ljubljana, Slovenia and the University of Alicante, Spain interviewed service users and carers on film using seven questions developed to examine key areas of social work skills, knowledge and values.

Service user and carer involvement in social work education is now well established since its inception as a compulsory requirement in the social work curriculum in the United Kingdom in 2003. Since then, there have been many examples of how such involvement has been approached by education providers. Nevertheless, one of the key obstacles and challenges in this field continues to centre on the need to achieve non-tokenistic user involvement which cements the engagement of service users and carers at the heart of social work education.