Systematic review of service user and carer involvement in social work education finds positive classroom experiences
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Service user and carer involvement in social work education is well established in the UK and many other countries. The value of lived experience in informing social work programmes is indisputable. However, research on the outcomes of this for social work practice and its subsequent impact on service users and carers is limited.
In 2013 I published a systematic review of studies on the outcomes of service user and carer involvement in social work education in the British Journal of Social Work with Karen Robinson. The aim was to explore the impact of this on students and their subsequent practice. It also explored the impact on service users and carers involved.
The 29 studies included in the review found positive experiences for students, and the service users and carers involved. However, there was limited research on outcomes in social work practice. We made recommendations for more research looking at the long-term impact of the use of lived experience in social work education.
A decade later, Selwyn Stanley suggested to me that we should take a look at the literature again to see if subsequent research has filled this gap in our knowledge. This review has just been published in the British Journal of Social Work.
Systematic review – a decade on
This review synthesised literature from the decade (2011–2020) published after those included in the previous review. We kept the inclusion criteria as similar as possible to the previous review to provide a close comparison, though we focused specifically on qualifying social work education in this review. We also tightened up the review procedures by following PRISMA scoping review guidelines (which were published since the previous review). By using a rigorous process of searching and applying our inclusion and exclusion criteria, we found 28 papers. Interestingly, the volume of research in this field has not changed significantly in the last decade.
Data were extracted and tabulated according to the framework for the evaluation of educational programmes used in the previous review. This looked at the papers according to the type of data provided: student, service user and carer, and educators’ experiences (level 1); students’ learning (level 2); students’ practice (level 3); and service user or carer outcomes (level 4).
The findings of the review were very similar to our earlier paper. Most studies were from the UK and reported data on student, service user and carer, and educators’ experiences. All stakeholders were predominantly positive about the perceived benefits of service user and care involvement, providing a strong justification for it.
Few papers reported findings at levels 2 and 3 in the framework used in the review. These reported benefits for students’ learning and their practice, though the evidence was minimal and publication bias cannot be ruled out. No papers reported outcomes for service users or carers who social work students subsequently worked with.
Future research
Research exploring the impact of service user and carer involvement on social work practice is complex to undertake. It is difficult to separate the impact of discrete classroom sessions or modules within a programme, which are directly informed by the lived experience of service users and carers, on the professional development of a social worker. There are numerous aspects of social work education, and it is very difficult to separate out components of it to explore the impact of them on social workers in practice.
However, this is not impossible. Methodologies which explore the impact of complex interventions on people are evolving. Realist methodologies or approaches informed by a theory of change are able to articulate the contexts and mechanisms of interventions, and the interactions between them. Future studies could learn from these approaches to help to advance our knowledge in this field. I will be keeping an eye on developments in the next decade to see if this occurs.
Paper
The full text of this paper can be accessed here:
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