Focus Statement

Field education provides students with experiential learning to become an effective professional in social work and human services work spaces. Your placement provides rich opportunity for transformational learning. To assist in your preparation for the task of group work and team building in a placement setting, you will be asked to undertake a case study via a group work process, and present this case study at the residential. Students will have the opportunity to showcase their team work skills and knowledge, be guided by the Community Focused Learning Process, working together to create a theoretical analysis, assessment and intervention for proposed for the case study.

Your role

You are a student social worker working with your peers in a group to undertake a case study. Using the CFL (Community Focussed Learning) process, the group is required to discuss and critically analyse your provided case study.

Product/performance

1. Students will be placed in small groups at residential and provided the case study. Students will be provided with time at residential to work on the Residential Case study.
2. The group is to engage in a CFL model of group work. Being guided by the principles and strategies of the CFL model. Literature on the CFL model will be given to the group by the unit coordinator.

3. The group will be expected to explore these 4 main areas:

   1. The presenting and background issues integrating at least (2) theories that seek to explain the situation.
   2. The theories must be clearly identified and the relationship to the scenario articulated.
   3. The team is required to propose a suitable intervention and provide a rationale for the decision.
   4. The team is to incorporate the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW) Practice Standards and Code of Ethics to guide and inform the case study. These documents will be given to the group at residential.
   5. Your group will deliver a presentation in a format of your choice.

The presentation will be graded, and is worth 10%.

Focus statement

Field education provides students with experiential learning to become an effective professional in social work and human services work spaces. Your placement provides rich opportunity for transformational learning. Reflection and critical analysis of our performance and responses to various work situations can become critical learning junctures that become incorporated into our practice framework. Reflecting on your residential case scenario group experience, you are to prepare a written essay that identifies the knowledge base (theories and knowledge) and skills (interpersonal communication, crisis intervention, assessment, group work, facilitation, professional communication etc) relevant to your scenario. With a focus on reflective practice, you are to describe and evaluate your responses and recommendations to the case scenario undertaken at residential school. This will include identification of the process of arriving at those decisions and reflection on that process and individual learning.

Your role

You are you – a student having just participated in a group case scenario assessment at residential school. Students are reminded that this is a REFLECTIVE and CRITICAL ANALYSIS of their performance in the group work and the overall group work processes.

Product/performance

1. You are to demonstrate your experiencing, reflecting, analysing and action planning skills in relation to the scenario undertaken at residential school while making connections to the AASW Practice Standards, AASW Code of Ethics and AASW student attributes as a guide. Your analysis of the scenario and decision making processes should include demonstrated ability to integrate theory to practice while incorporating your own personal reflections and recommendations for your practice as a student social worker on placement.

2. Your paper should provide a summary reflection and analysis of your participation and role in the group process, referring to your perceived strengths and importantly, identified areas for further development.

3. Your paper should identify recommendations for your future practice including specification of relevant learning goals you will include in your learning agreement as a result of the reflecting experience. The written essay should identify which scenario your group worked on however it should not repeat details of the scenario. 1000 words (10% wordage more or less permitted excluding appendices and references)

This assessment should be submitted to moodle using Microsoft Word Document.

Focus statement

With a focus on social work knowledge and skills geared toward client change and the values that assist in discerning one professional approach from another, select two experiences from Field Education 1 to be used as case studies to demonstrate your emerging analysis skills and integration of theory to practice.

Your role

You are you – a student on your first placement.

Product/performance

The case studies need not be confined to direct practice such as casework, case management, group work, or family work but may be based on indirect practice such as organisational practice, neighbourhood or community work, social development, social policy or research.

You may also wish to compare and contrast processes of change between the case studies drawn from direct and indirect practice.

You are to demonstrate your ability to compare and contrast two (2) case studies during Field Education 1 where processes of change reached an impasse against a second case study where change strategies were accomplished.

You are to demonstrate your ability to evaluate what change interventions are/were possible in the case study and where change processes reached an impasse and justify, on reflection, your preferred course of action. Irrespective of whether the case study selected involved Indigenous clients /communities or those from Culturally and Linguistically diverse backgrounds, a section of the paper must be devoted to evaluating the theoretical approaches that would be appropriate to your chosen course of action in these contexts.

You are to begin this analysis using the relevant AASW practice standards as a guide. This evaluation must be informed by the integration of knowledge and theory you have acquired in all of your prior studies to date. The written assessment is to be presented in a case study format and students may utilise appendices to include relevant case information or background data in addition to the case comparative analysis work.

Observe all ethical and professional practices and placement organisational directives in relation to respecting the anonymity of those involved. As the Field Education Co-ordinator is aware of your location there is no need to identify the name of your host organisation in electronic or printed documents. For example, if undertaking a case study analysis with the Department of Child Safety Services, refers to the organisation as a ‘child protection service’.

2000 words (10% wordage more or less permitted excluding appendices and references)

This assessment should be uploaded to moodle using Microsoft Word Document

You must attend the compulsory residential to complete this course. Please note that attendance and successful completion of the residential is a course requirement and therefore any previous attempts at Field Education 1 and Integrating Theory and Practice 1 that resulted in a fail grade are not rolled over or counted towards a subsequent attempt at the course.

You must ensure that you have 'signed in and out' of every residential session. The residential staff will be reviewing the attendance sheet after each session to ensure that students are present for the entirety of the residential. Staff will not be expected to follow up on any absentees, it will be solely the responsibility of the student to ensure that 'record of attendance' is completed.In order to meet the requirements of the Australian Association of Social Workers (AASW), a student cannot miss anymore than two hours of the residential, and must provide a reason to do so (ie unavoidable event, illness).

You must pass this assessment to pass the unit. Failure to pass this assessment will result in the final grade of 'Fail' for the entire unit.

Each student must attend residential in term 1 of 2017, and ensure they have completed the 'Record of Attendance', and then will receive a grade accordingly.