Older Social Work Students

Yesterday I had the pleasure of delivering a talk to two groups of Pharmacy students at UCLan in Preston. The topic was to be discussed was long term conditions and delivering medication, either as a carer of someone with a long term condition, or as a user of such services. I qualified on both levels.

The students listened quite attentively, and made this attention clear by the questions and comments when came at end of the session. All in all, an enjoyable experience, which caused me later that evening to consider the difference between these students and Social Work students to whom I also deliver the same, or similar talks.

As a longish time member of Comensus at UCLan, I have become accustomed to delivering a variety of talks to Social Work students at both the Preston campus and the one at Burnley. For those of you unfamiliar with Lancashire, both towns are about fifteen miles apart, and similar in their demographic make up. Where they differ however is in the make up of the student groups we talk to.

In general, the ones at Preston are average age students. Some of them straight from school, others have taken a gap year, some have done some work in a social or health environment, but in general they are all of the same age group. Young - well, by my geriatric condition everyone is young!

The students from Burnley are different though, and always have been since we started to teach there. They have almost all done some previous health care or home care work. Many of them have personal experience of having used social care in their own family situations, or currently work part time in mental health or social health institutions. The difference in the age of the two student groups has always been noticeably marked. 

Many of the younger ones from Preston come to the course with a view of Social Workers and Social Work conditioned by the media, and frequently little other experience. As we well know, the media are always on the lookout to spear a Social Worker, whether or not it is justified by closer examination or not. 'Social Worker news' sells newspapers, and that is the whole reason for newspapers. The point is though, that these students view is coloured by what they see and read in the press and on the 'box', and this affects their outlook on the course, and also on us as service users and carers. They often, and I stress that this is not always the case, they often come with a view of service users and carers which is based only on what they have seen and read, and not from any direct personal experience. 

The same is not true of the students from Burnley. Because they come to us at a later stage in their lives, they have seen things, done things, been involved with and had to deal with life, and all its problems. As such, they appear to be more able to accept what we service users, and their lecturers, tell them. This is not to say that they accept blindly what they are told, far from it, they frequently discuss with us from the vantage point of experience, and this makes a very big difference in their learning process.

Students coming into degree courses with some real life experience in care or health services are more able to understand what is being said to them. They are more able to enter into meaningful discussions with lecturers, us, and the rest of their cohort. Evidence of their understanding is clearly seen in the presentation work, whether in groups or individually, and their individual written work. It displays a level of understanding not always present in the younger students.

So, what I am suggesting is this. Should acceptance onto a social work degree be conditional upon either, some real life experience of having used social or health care, or perhaps simply accepting those students who are much older than the average nineteen or twenty year old?