The Group Values of Educational Encounters: Working with Service Users and Students in a Participatory Classroom Environment

Abstract

This article examines a participatory educational group approach to involving service users in a social work education programme. In particular it focuses on the skills and values that informed the lecturer's management of this group process and the relevance of the International Association for Social Work with Groups Standards for Social Work Practice with Groups to the purpose of the group as well as to how this group was facilitated.

Keywords:

• classroom-based group
• mental health service user perspectives
• experts by experience
• participatory education
• service users as educators
• IASWG and AASWG Standards

Notes

1. The term service user is used in this article to denote those who use services. It is acknowledged that other terms exist which are used to describe people who use or receive services such as client, consumer, or sometimes in medical settings patient. It is also acknowledged that all of these terms, including service user, are problematic, albeit in different ways, because they link the service users' identity to their usage of a particular service and fail to capture the multiple dimensions of peoples' identities (McLaughlin, 2009). The terms client, customer, and consumer can imply a level of choice on the part of the person receiving services, but in mental health contexts this is not always the case as mandated treatment is possible in many jurisdictions and sometimes those receiving services have no choice in the matter. The term service user is used here as a term that describes anyone who receives a service, whether that person wishes to do so or not, and as such, it acknowledges the power differential that can sometimes exist between those who use and those who provide services.

2. An expert-by-experience in this text refers to anyone who has firsthand knowledge of a phenomenon, such as usage of health or social services (Beresford, 2007; Preston-Shoot, 2007). Beresford and Evans (1999) suggested that with the broadened base of social research, which now includes varied forms of research such as “participatory,” “collaborative,” and “emancipatory” inquiry, has come a greater appreciation of the contribution to knowledge that can be found through investigation of people's personal experience(s).