Lessons learned from an in-house social work placement: practicum students’ views about a stress reduction peer support pilot project

Abstract

ABSTRACT Securing social work field placements is increasingly becoming a challenge for social work education around the globe. In response to an unexpected and sudden shortage of field placements in a small primarily undergraduate university near Toronto, Canada, the authors developed an in-house Stress Reduction Peer Support (SRPS) pilot project to provide 12 third-year undergraduate students with the 240 placement hours required to complete their Bachelor of Social Work degree. In-depth interviews with eight of the 12 practicum students revealed support for the idea of the in-house SRPS placement. However, practicum students also expressed the need for improvements if such an unconventional placement were to be offered again. These included the importance of advanced planning for in-house placements, ensuring students do not have unrealistic expectations about placements, allowing students to choose whether to participate in unconventional placements, ensuring the educational content of the placement aligns with what students are learning in their courses, being clear about how each component of the placement aligns with social work anti-oppressive practice, and ensuring sufficient social work-specific supervision. The use of real-plays as opposed to role-plays was questioned, especially regarding students’ discomfort with sharing personal and sensitive information and submitting video-recordings via the Internet.