Placements and the themed approach

To help encourage greater understanding and a focus on effective practice, our degree programme at Bucks gives you valuable experience with a range of service users and professionals, with some of our established partners including Buckinghamshire County Council and MIND.

Every year you will go on an assessed placement in a practice environment, where you’ll have a chance to put theory into practice.

Year one: the perspectives of service users and carers

The placements in the first year are all in environments that offer opportunities to work closely with service users and carers. This allows you to gain a realistic idea of, and respect for, professional social work practice, and in turn gives those directly involved in the profession the chance to make the work of the next generation that much more effective. Service users participate in the selection procedure, curriculum development, teaching, assessment and managment of the course.

They will evaluate your work and participate in presentations to other students. We place a great importance on this collaboration, because only when we come to understand and discuss the problems service users and carers face, can we find the inspiration and knowledge to solve them together.

Year two: statutory work

In the second year the theme is statutory work. After seven weeks of intensive learning social work processes, general legislation and legislation specific to each service user group, you’ll go on your longest placement, in a team undertaking statutory work, coming in to the university for a day a week for placement linked teaching and learning.

Teaching and learning in the second year also focuses on the way in which social workers can work effectively in multi-professional settings, working closely with other disciplines.

Year three: creativity

By the end of the second year, having experienced teaching on all aspects of social work and having contrasting practice learning experiences, you’ll have some idea of what you would like to research for your dissertation. You will have the opportunity to pursue your interests, developing your own research project and, on the international social work module, have the opportunity to go abroad and examine the methods of social work practice in another country.

The third year is designed to challenge you, to bring out the individual qualitities and skills that only you can offerm and prepare you to make the transition into professional practice.