Focus statement:

With a focus on casework and case management, you are required to demonstrate your preparation and knowledge informing the first face-to-face contact with a client in your field placement agency.

Your role:

Imagine that you are social work students sharing the same placement in a human service organisation.

Context:

As students on placement it is your responsibility to co-ordinate your collaborative learning time together in order to be prepared for individual or group supervision sessions and to demonstrate that you can use the time as effectively as possible.

Your field educator has asked you to prepare a plan for an initial assessment session with a client who has been accepted onto your field educator’s case load. Your field educator wants to make a final assessment of your capacity to undertake independent contact with a service user under close supervision. This plan is to demonstrate your knowledge of case work or case management methods for service delivery.

Product/performance (Part 1 Group Submission) 20%:

You have 1500 words to show your preparedness and competency to meet with an individual client for the first time. You are not required to present any ideas beyond what needs to take place at your first-point-of-contact with your client which would usually occur over 1-1.5 hrs of time. You decide on the written format and layout appropriate for a busy working relationship with your field educator. The case studies will be available in week 1 of term on Moodle.

Logistics:

This submission is important preparation for the residential program and weekly workshops.

• As you arrive to Moodle you will be asked to nominate a case study you are interested in working with for this assessment. For those students attending the weekly residential tutorials, you will have a case study allocated.
• Within this assessment’s discussion space at Moodle you are to negotiate working with one or two other people for this submission (a duo or trio submission).
• In Week 1 each learning group will have their case study confirmed and a private wiki space allocated to work together online. This referral forms the basis of the written submission.
• Each duo or trio will be required to upload one (part 1) submission and then the individual reflection (part 2) should be uploaded separately and as individual submissions.

Word Count: The word count is considered from the first word of the introduction to the last word of the conclusion. It excludes the cover page, abstract, contents page and reference list. It includes in-text references and direct quotations.

Product/performance (Part 2 Individual Submission) 10%:

Individual Reflection

Consider the statements below by Pawar and Anscombe (2015, p. 41)

"...reflection involves deeply and critically thinking about the past practice event in order to improve and/or replicate good practice. Reflective practice involves using those critical reflections for better practice and generating practice-based knowledge".

Reflective practice can often focus on only the 'knowing' and 'doing' of practice. However, it is equally important to focus on the 'being' of practitioners. Pawar and Anscombe (2015, p. 29) further explain"being involves recognising that humans are both shaped by and are shapers of the environment - physically, socially, ecologically and spiritually"

Product/ performance

Each group member must submit their own reflection on how they used 'self' in the group process. Drawing on the literature and your knowledge of reflective and reflexive practice you are to prepare a 500-word response addressing the following:

• How was your personality influential in the group process?
• Recalling your experience in the group, how did your belief systems influence the group process and understanding of the case study?
• What do you understand as the key relational dynamics present in the group process?
• How did you use anxiety at various phases of the group process?
• How did you use self-disclosure (or not) during the group process?
• How did you use justice during the group process?
• How did you use courage / wisdom / temperance during the group process?
• What have you learned about your use of self when working with others in a social work learning space?

Assessment 1- Part 1 (20% weighting)

Focus statement:

Application of the necessary skills, knowledge and values for initiating case work or case management.

Your role:

Imagine you are a social work or human service student undertaking a placement in a human service organisation.

Context:

Your field educator is now proposing that in order for more in-depth supervision to occur, with client consent, you will record a twenty minute excerpt of work undertaken for analysis and critique.

Products/performance:

A twenty minute recording of a simulated learning activity involving your professional response to someone imagining themselves to be a client of a service is required for submission. Most of the learning required for the competent completion of this assessment task will occur over the three days of residential.

This assessment task invites you to begin creating your style of social work practice. In this submission you must introduce yourself as a social work student. Each submission/approach will be as unique as the peers accompanying you in this course. Therefore the emphasis of residential learning is not the demonstration or mimicking of staff skills but a focus on all participants receiving timely feedback from academic staff about the development of your own professional practice.

The complexity of the social issue you choose as the basis of your simulated learning activity is not being assessed; it is your response to a client’s presentation at an agency that is being assessed. In other words, it is not necessary for you to work with an emotionally provocative issue or an overly complex social situation in order to demonstrate your competency and confidence with the casework/case management method.

In preparation for this submission you must undertake the following assessment with anyone offering to role play for you before proceeding to a recording:

• all people involved in this product are imagining and playing a part in a simulated learning activity
• all participants are at least 18 years of age
• the social issue negotiated should not be closely related to past, present or future events for the role player and you must establish this at the outset with the individual who agrees to assist you
• encourage your participants to draw on their experiences of/create composites of other people they know as opposed to themselves
• provide your participants with an opportunity to debrief or discuss the simulated experience after it has concluded including: what they thought and how they felt about the experience, breakthroughs in their own thinking about the character they played, unexpected emotions, what they would have said if they had more time, how the person who adopted the client role is different from the simulated learning part the played, what they might do to finish their connection with the person they played
• inform them of their right to contact the unit coordinator immediately if any distress results from their participation in order for appropriate support and actions to be put into place
• inform them that the University requires them to sign a form consenting to their involvement (to be provided at Moodle) which must be scanned and uploaded in Moodle

Key tips for successful completion:

• Approach your role play participants early in the term.  Previous students have been able to complete their video recording after hours at residential school with students in their small learning group
  
• Always test run your recording equipment before attempting the full 20 minute product.
• The camera and audio must focus on you but is useful to have both participants in the frame
• If time permits, undertake several recordings so you have a choice about which to submit in the end.
• Even when working with people you know well provide your participant with only the essential information needed. The less information provided, the less anxious your volunteer is likely to be. Sometimes participants become anxious for you if they have too much information to recall. After providing them with the basic scenario give them permission to develop the role in any direction they wish. Give them permission to improvise and let them know that there are no right or wrong ways of creating the person. It’s your task to fit in with their narrative not theirs to fit in with you.
• In preparation for the critique (Assessment task # 3) – find a critical friend in the class and swap recordings asking for their honest feedback.

Format:

The audio visual recording is to be copied onto a USB for submission or uploaded to a cloud drive or storage such as OneDrive (which all students will have as part of their student enrolment), Google Drive or Dropbox and the submission link shared with the unit coordinator. Students can contact TASAC for support in accessing and using cloud drives. The audio visual recording must be saved in either Windows Media Player or VLC format. Media player and VLC software program are designed for viewing audio visual recordings and are available to download for free from the Internet. Before submitting your audio visual recording you must check that the file type extension is either mp4, mpeg, avi, wav or wmv. 

Documentation:

A consent form must be signed by all participants and uploaded to Moodle.  An Assessment Cover Sheet must also be completed and attached to the audiovisual recording. Assessment Cover Sheets must include the submission link if uploaded to Moodle.

Submission (Online)

Upload a link to your audio visual submission on cloud drive along with the Assessment Cover Sheet and Consent Form on Moodle

Please note: An additional copy of the audio visual recording must be retained by the student.  

Focus statement:

A written critique showing evidence of your capacity to engage in both academic analysis and professional reflective and reflexive practice.

Your role:

Imagine you are a student on placement who has completed an initial individual casework or case management session and have been asked to undertake a formal written analysis of that experience for the purposes of supervision.

Context:

It is important to remember that there is no ‘perfect’ session in case work or case management. Nor is there one single formula for demonstrating effective helping - it is a range of things including securing good physical space, time, presence, knowledge, values, and skills combining to create an atmosphere where clients make decisions about continuing to work alongside you. Therefore, after any client contact it is essential to ‘walk through’ the observations, thoughts, emotions, atmosphere, conversation, behaviors, and outcomes that transpired in order to plan what the next contact may look and sound like.

Product/performance:

You are to provide a critique: a formal academic and professional analysis of the strengths and limitations of your work in Assessment task # 2 against the published literature of best practice in case work and case management. At least one part of this submission must include general examples of what might need to be done differently informed by your learning about cross-cultural competence. Part of this critique must also address your own reflective practice or the strengths and limitations of your ‘use of self’ in the beginning phases of work such as but not limited to: your non-verbal communication, verbal communication, the impacts of the clients on your values, your values and their impact on the client, shortfalls in knowledge, and the skills utilised in the beginning phases of this working relationship. This submission also asks you to address reflexive practice which is the future action you will be taking on next contact with the client based on the work you have completed in reflective practice

Word Count: 1500 words. The word count is considered from the first word of the introduction to the last word of the conclusion. It excludes the cover page, abstract, contents page and reference list. It includes in-text references and direct quotations

Assessment criteria for written critique/analysis