Emerging Issues in Fieldwork - Restraints and Opportunities
This paper will examine the emerging trends in within the Supervised Professional Practice Unit at the School of Social Work, University of Melbourne. Changes and developments within university, agency and student domains will be highlighted. It will also examine the effectiveness of university-agency partnership arrangements.
This paper will explore the myriad of issues which confront staff in field education today, including duty of care, access and equity issues, and an ability to manage and support sustainable fieldwork options. This challenge for fieldwork is coupled with an increasingly diverse population of students who study social work, including students with sensory and psychiatric disabilities. These issues are managed within the context of agency changes, organisational restructure and increasing competition with other human services courses.
This paper will present a consideration of the meaning and effects of such issues in re-thinking the ways in which fieldwork courses are managed and delivered.