engleski

Involving users in social work education - mutual learning and teaching

The aim of this paper is to develop some more understanding about users involvement in social work education and to encourage stronger, more formal links between School of Social Work, University of Zagreb, Croatia and users in social work education. So far service users in Croatia have played little part in the development of social work practice and education in general. Researches on users’ involvement are demonstrating important role of users in social work education. Also, the new social work qualification requires user involvement in all aspects of practice. Results of qualitative research on involving users in social work education are presented in the paper. This research is a part of project “ Service users as experience experts in social work education and research” , funded by IASSW. We wanted to find out how users conceptualise their involvement in education ; what do they need to be better prepared for involvement and what responsibilities have educators and professional community in getting users ready for involvement. The results so far have supported the idea that, if we want to enhance the involvement of the users in social work education, than first we have to make sure they have some understanding of the process and the content of the education. Achievements, obstacles, and further steps in making users' role more clear in education will be discussed.

user involvement; social work; research; education

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