A Case for Creativity: Responding to Placement Barriers and Advancing Justice for Students

Overview: Follow one program through their process of developing and implementing a creative response to placement barriers that promotes human rights and social justice relating to access to higher education. This presentation will cover key elements of the response and provide participants with concrete strategies to support innovation in their programProposal text: COVID-19 impacts were and are far reaching. For Field Education, the signature pedagogy of social work education, one university has been forced to explore more options regarding remote practicum placements as one of these impacts. The health and safety of students is a top priority and due to caregiving responsibilities and health concerns some students simply cannot be in an agency where they may be at risk of multiple exposures. Many agencies have had to implement and expand tele-services. In a world where there’s not enough resources and agencies are stressed; some long-term partners have put practicum placements on hold during this transition. Access to higher education is a human rights and social justice issue. All people should have access to higher education and the pursuit of a degree no matter their health status or geographic location (Gilchrist, 2018). The internal and external pressures on field faculty to place these students encouraged exploration of creative strategies and solutions.

This University has been utilizing a field unit model that includes regular meetings with a field faculty liaison, advanced critical thinking activities, peer learning and simulated activities for years. Expanding the existing model to create a fully remote placement where the field unit served as the agency and a faculty member served as field instructor were the easier parts to identify. The more difficult part presented itself during the development of competency-based practicum tasks, especially regarding the engagement and intervention focused competencies (CSWE, 2015).

Following the field unit model, the fully remote placement was led by a field faculty liaison with students attending weekly group supervision to support peer learning and enhanced critical thinking. The faculty field liaison collaborated with students to develop unique, individualized learning plans focusing on macro-level activities. The field faculty liaison implemented feedback loops to promote continuous learning and improvement and to support evaluation of the placement.

This approach presented both strengths and challenges. By employing flexibility in Field Education, rather than suspending programs due to pandemic-related factors, social work programs minimize the disruption in student learning and skill development while also remodeling how to pivot during a crisis (Mantulak et al., 2021). One of the key benefits of providing the fully remote placement option was that students did not have to delay their practicum, thus ensuring they remain on-track for graduation. Developing direct practice skills is a common challenge experienced by social work schools and students in moving to a virtual environment (Mantulak et al., 2021). In the fully remote placement implemented by this university, this challenge was addressed using formal and informal simulations. This area will continue to be explored throughout the existence of the field unit.

In this presentation, field faculty will share their experience developing, implementing, and evaluating the fully remote placement and discuss the implications on advancing human rights and social justice for students in Field Education. This panel presentation will promote discussion on utilizing creative strategies to ensure students have access to quality Field Education in a virtual environment.