Civil Society, Non-governmental Organisations, and Social Work Education

Abstract

Social work is an international profession and similarly social work education internationally has always embraced both academic and practical components. Social workers should have field experiences while still in education, which will enable them to test their skills, abilities and knowledge in practice. The present study focuses on the scrutiny of how organisations and agencies such as local authorities, NGOs and civil society contribute in social work education by offering and supporting social workers’ field placements. Also, the benefits for organisations and students were searched, while barriers and opportunities for proposals were explored. The current research was a qualitative study aiming to investigate the importance of field placements for social work education. Data were collected by means of interviews; eight interviews were conducted, four with social workers working as field placement supervisors for Universities and four with social workers employed in organisations. A Grounded Theory approach was adopted for the data analysis and the software program QSR “NUD*IST” (version “N6") was used as a technical tool to facilitate the data analysis. Four main themes were identified by the study (“Benefits of field placement”, “Problems in field placement”, “Knowledge/Skills” and “Proposals for improvement”), which are presented and further elaborated in the discussion. Overall, since all involved stakeholders (Universities, organisations and civil society) have benefits, field placements should be supported and be improved for larger improvement in society.