A collection of images suitable for use in social work training. These images have Creative Commons licences and may be freely used for non-commercial purposes.

Paper presented at 2010 JSWEC Conference. The present government aims to ensure that people who use social services are given personal/individual budgets with which they can directly purchase the care and support they need. Personal budgets are seen as the means by which services will be ‘personalised’ and designed to fit around the person who uses them, rather than the other way around. Increasingly, this is becoming the ‘default’ model as local authority Performance Indicators encourage councils with social services responsibilities to offer personal budgets to service users, and ‘traditional’ forms of service provision are discouraged. However, the evidence base to support the introduction of personal/individual budgets currently remains weak, with only a handful of published studies, which are of variable quality. Our paper reports on a large, quantitative study, using a quasi-experimental design, of the impact of self-directed support and personal budgets on people who use social services. It was carried out in an English shire county in 2008-09. Amongst other findings, the study found evidence of positive outcomes for people from most care groups, on a range of measures. However, like the Individual Budgets Support Evaluation Network (IBSEN) report (Glendinning et al 2008) the study found no evidence of benefit for older people who were offered budgets. Evidence from both studies raises questions about the appropriateness of personal budgets for some people as a means of achieving personalisation. We then focus attention on the socio-political ‘lineage’ of personal/individual budgets, considering more fully what the drive to personalisation tells us about the nature of citizenship and governance contemporaneously. We argue that personal budgets may offer a false prospectus to many people, not least firstly, by promoting market rights but actually diminishing social rights and, secondly, by proffering participatory forms of governance as a replacement for traditional representative democratic structures.

Paper presented at 2010 JSWEC Conference. In the last decade marginalised groups have directly or indirectly utilised a range of creative and visual media to challenge dominant stereotypical and pathologised imagery and representations. Such 'outsider' perspectives have provided an alternative voice in a range of cultural contexts, from art in the street and installation to post modern 'sit down' comedy and contemporary music. In the author's role as a lecturer in undergraduate and postgraduate social work education a range of contemporary creative media have been used in and outside of the university environment to raise students' awareness of the ideological battle that is currently taking place in the 24/7 media that surround them.This has aimed to provide students with greater understanding of issues of power and partnership alongside a critical awareness of how authentic experiences of exclusion are being articulated. In the teaching of a 'Creativity and empowerment' unit,the author and students have worked alongside artists, poets and film makers who are engaged in changing perceptions and 'mainstreaming' perspectives that have previously occupied the position of being 'outside' most institutions. The paper will outline and critically evaluate how such a curriculum has been developed with the involvement of service users and been delivered to student groups over the last two years. A consideration will also be given to the use of creative artefacts to assess students knowledge and their ability to embrace the principles of participation in their consultative work with service users.

Paper presented at 2010 JSWEC Conference. The significance of religion and spirituality for social work practice is now quite often acknowledged in academic writing, although arguably it is not yet so well recognised in routine social work practice. Western academic writing in social work books and journals tend to emphasise an individualised version of spirituality which is reasonably comfortable for secular liberals. This presentation will argue, on the basis of research with Muslim families about the religious nurture of children, that when social work practitioners are interacting with Muslim service users, they need to be aware of the importance of formal religion, rather than spirituality in any individualised Western sense. Although Muslim families are diverse in their belief and practice, the dominant world view tends to be an unwavering monotheism and conformity to religious texts. The presentation will draw on a research project from the AHRC/ESRC Religion and Society programme. This involved secondary analysis of the Home Office Citizenship Survey and multi-method qualitative research with 60 Muslim families across a wide spectrum of ethnicity and social class. The presentation will focus on the implications of the research findings for child and family social work.

Using the idea of space to understand how the partnership between De Montfort University, local authorities, and service users and carers has been shaped in working together on Post Qualifying Awards. We will examine how the space is identified as a 'growing space' where people have been valued and enabled to grow. Within this space ideas are shared freely by all and crutially everyone has a voice. We intend to examine processes and practices to ascertain how the space became a 'growing space' rather than a restrictive space. We will also examine how this partnership approach has had an impact upon candidates undertaking the programme. Through the use of evaluative processes, lessons learned are to be considered and implications identified in relation to the Social Work Task Force recommendations. The application of lessons learnt are to be considered by participants in relation to their current partnership arrangements and consideration given to how to make these 'growing spaces' for all involved. Our approach to delivering this presentation will be seen to mirror the partnership working that has been established on the PQ Programme. A service user representative, local agency partner and PQ Programme leader at De Montfort University have designed and will deliver this presentation together.

Service users account related to making decisions about using medication.

Service users experiences of mental health and medication.

Paper about Employers, Service Users, Carers and a University Developing the PQ Higher Specialist Level Mental Health Programme. Presented at the 2008 JSWEC Conference

This guidance is designed to complement established good practice initiatives in the involvement of service users and carers in Social Work training on Degree programmes in Northern Ireland. Based on research conducted with service users, carers, students, agency and academic partners, the guide focuses on the key values which need to accompany such involvement as well as including case studies of good practice to show how service users and carers have been effectively involved to date at all levels of social work training in Northern Ireland.

This resource helps educators consider two primary issues of service user and carer involvement in social work education: 1. Student selection 2. Student assessment The aim of this resource is to help you explore issues of service user and carer involvement in interdisciplinary education from their perspective.