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ABSTRACT
In this paper, we explore ways in which social work educators might respond to students who report that mental health issues underlie their difficulty in meeting core competencies, or otherwise use the language of mental health to describe their struggles to succeed in social work programs. We discuss various trends in policy responses in Canada, the US, the UK, and Ireland. While there are general policy trends, it is clear that responding to these kinds of issues requires the development of highly flexible and situated policy processes that can respond to student realities, concern for students’ rights and privacy, and an awareness of potential discrimination against students. These processes also need to meet the specificities of practicums, particular institutional policies, the mandates of relevant professional bodies, and the precise local legislative framework that shapes these situations. Given these varying contexts, in this conceptual paper, we used a framework on disability that is informed by critical theory to engage existing school policies and propose a set of reflective questions that can guide schools of social work to create an overall responsive environment. These reflective questions are designed to help social work educators balance the rights and needs of students with the professional and institutional demands that students meet core competencies in their education.
Acknowledgments
We’d like to thank the many colleagues, students and community members who supported this work by sharing their experience with our team. In addition, we would like to thank Alise de Bie and the blind reviewers whose comments encouraged us to shift and refine our thinking around this topic.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Sarah Todd
Dr. Sarah Todd is a full professor at Carleton University. Her main areas of research are social work education and community practice. In particular, she is concerned with issues of social justice in social work education and the use of simulation as a teching pedagogy. She has two projects in the areas of community practice. One supports grassroots youth organizations to do research and evaluation. The second focuses on developing an app to collect usage and impact data for youth centres across Canada.
Kenta Asakura
Dr. Kenta Asakura is an assistant professor at Carleton University. His main areas of research are simulation-based education, clinical social work, and social ecologies of resilience among queer and trans* youth. Kenta teaches clinical practice courses in the undergraduate and graduate programs and is committed to simulation-based clinical social work education. He is the 2018 recipient of the Carleton University New Faculty Teaching Excellence Award and recently completed his three-year term as an appointed councillor for the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Council on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Expression (2015-2018).
Brenda Morris
Brenda Morris is an instructor at Carleton University. She also co-ordinates graduate field education in the School of Social Work. Brenda is particularly interested in the pedagogy of field education and student and community-based mental health. She is co-founder of the Coalition of Ontario Fied Education Directors (COFED) and a board member for the North American Network of Field Education Directors (NANFED). She is also the president of the board of the Canadian Mental Health Association, Ottawa Branch.
Brooke Eagle
Brooke Eagle is a Field Education Coordinator and instructor at Carleton University. She received a bachelor’s degree in psychology, a bachelor’s degree in social work, and a master’s degree in social work from Carleton University. Her teaching areas are values and ethics in social work, direct practice for individuals, groups and families, and integrative field seminars. Her main research areas are teaching and learning methods, socialization processes, and evaluation within social work field education.
Gareth Park
Gareth Park coordinated student placements at the Canadian Mental Health Association in Ottawa for a number of years. He is currently a PhD student at the Carleton School of Social Work. He is writing his dissertation on the emergence and evolution of the concept of professional boundaries as a technology of power in Canadian social work.