FIELD EDUCATION PLACEMENTS - DISCUSSION PAPER AND RECOMMENDATIONS Further clarification of AIWCW guidelines - 29th June 2009

by Ian Murray, Chairperson, Membership Assessment Panel, AIWCW

1. Introduction

1.1 Colleges are having difficulty in finding appropriate field education placements for the Diploma of Community Welfare Work, and this has led to a variety of doubtful or unusual placements. In order to further clarify AIWCW standards and requirements for placements, additional guidelines are discussed below. These are not to be viewed as new requirements in principle, but some colleges have been pushing at the boundaries of professional education and appropriate vocational workplace experience, and it is now necessary to further define what is acceptable.

1.2 Field education staff who were earlier professionally educated in social work and welfare work are probably already familiar with the broad principles, but many seem to be struggling to cope with the pressure for placements placed upon them by excessive student numbers.

1.3 AIWCW warned college managers several years ago about the impossibility of finding sufficient placements and we continue to issue these warnings, but in many cases they have been ignored. With a few notable exceptions, student enrolments have not decreased, and many smaller colleges apparently intend to increase enrolments.

1.3 "Welfare work" has been accepted as a profession by government authorities, and professional field education experiences are therefore mandatory. The profession will not be supported by sub-standard placements and AIWCW will insist that placements are distinctively oriented to the welfare work profession. Note that the term "welfare work" can be used interchangeably with work in community and human services.

2. Placements in Aged Care, Disabilities, and Youth Work

2.1 Aged and disability care facilities and recreation and camping bodies for young people and the disabled are some of the most common agencies being increasingly used by colleges. Food distribution and opportunity shop locations have also been used in the past. Some such agencies may be keen to use students as `volunteers' for routine and menial tasks or in simple monitoring roles, and colleges need to ensure that professional welfare work activities are the overwhelming focus.

2.2 In many agencies, students have been involved to some extent in discussions with clients about their needs, and then in planning individual, group or community activities, participating in them, and evaluating them. Students "learn to engage and consult clients about their needs", and "assess, plan, implement and evaluate group programs". It is also acknowledged that outings and craft activities, etc., can be used to enhance rapport, to elicit background information about clients, to explore clients' current feelings and needs, and to participate in planning based upon assessment, research, and negotiation.

2.3 Similarly, card games, table tennis, bush walks, football, horse-riding, etc. may have benefits in increasing clients' confidence and self-esteem, and students participating with them may add somewhat to those goals, as well as providing better understanding of the clients and their needs. But all these basic activities for youth, the aged, and the disabled, are not the main focus of welfare work, even in their planning and evaluation, and no more than a bare minimum of student time should be involved.

2.4 The professional indemnity and public liability insurance provided for AIWCW members is also relevant in that it mentions "providing verbal advice, guidance and support", and any claim involving physical activities such as horse-riding or camping would be rejected.

2.5 Although there is no doubt that a certain amount of overlap exists between psycho-social needs and general well-being on the one hand, and physical and recreational needs, and intellectual stimulation, entertainment, and artistic needs on the other, welfare work students should spend the great majority of their placement time involved with the former, together with the ethical, management and policy issues that arise from the social environment of clients. The other kinds of needs are much more the province of other occupations oriented to recreation, health and physical needs, as well as specialisations within other community services areas of practice, such as aged care, youth, disability, or `leisure and health', rather than generic welfare work.

2.6 What might be appropriate for the first field education placement, as an exploratory process involving some minimal `hands on' experience of client activities, should be even less obvious in the second placement when understanding and skills should culminate in full readiness for professional employment.

3. Inappropriate planning of client activity by welfare work students

3.1 Many physical and recreational activities or programs appropriate at an aged care facility or youth program can be assessed, planned, and evaluated at a relatively low level of analysis, and permanent staff engaged in such tasks are often at AQF level 3, with only monitoring activities being undertaken by higher level staff. Whether to set up bingo games, community singing, visiting speakers or comedians, etc. would seem to fall into this category, and professional welfare work would not normally be directly involved.

3.2 If more skill and sophisticated analysis and implementation is required, this is often carried out by professional specialists in such areas as occupational therapy, physiotherapy, nursing, medicine, rehabilitation, psychology, etc.. Whether participation in competitive board games is psychologically suitable, or horse-riding and soccer are medically and physically suitable for particular clients, should be the province of specialised expertise, not “community welfare work”. (Compare the competencies needed for the Cert. IV in Leisure and Health, for example.)

3.3 The planning, `supervising' and monitoring of recreational and physical activity with regard to `occupational health and safety' and `duty of care', should also be restricted, where these involve such issues as accident prevention and environmental damage, etc. (OH&S has so far been too widely used as a major part in many placements in general, even though it occupies a small proportion of the course.)

4. Appropriate planning and other activities by welfare work students

4.1 Students could participate in surveys of client or community needs and preferences and their opinions of current programs, whether conducted informally or via formal research. Preferences and opinions about some form of recreational activity could be included, but wider assessment of psycho-social needs and issues should be the main focus of student survey activity.

4.2 Students could also be appropriately involved in some staff team planning of more general activities, either for an individual client, or for a group program. They could be expected to contribute information, insights and recommendations (presumably under supervision or after consultation with their professional supervisor) relating to the social and psychological aspects of clients. But detailed involvement would be inappropriate in the actual planning and participation in many of these activities or programs, even when social interaction was part of the program.

4.3 Programs might be professionally suitable for welfare work if students were mostly involved in client group sharing of experiences, resolution of individual or group tension, financial and other personal security concerns, discussions of relationships with family and their visits (or lack of these), and other activities more oriented to overall well-being and psycho-social functioning, including `case management'.

4.4 With appropriate close supervision, working directly with the families and friends of clients would be an appropriate role for welfare work students, and an activity which is often greatly needed. Family and friends may need to deal with grief and other personal and emotional issues, and require referral to specialised agencies. Families could also be assisted in the planning of activities and fulfilling the expressed needs of residents, and contacting external resources such as lawyers.

4.5 An example of possibly appropriate planning for recreational activity might be pertinent. If a thorough analysis and professional discussion came to the conclusion that encouraging a particular client or small group to complete a jig-saw puzzle fulfilled the need for stimulation, problem-solving, and group cooperation, then contributing to the assessment, planning and later evaluation of such a program would seem appropriate for student activity, but not as a lone activity. Some limited coaching in how to fit the pieces together and brief actual participation by the student in the jigsaw task may be appropriate. But this `implementation’ aspect should occupy only a very small proportion of student time, say, half an hour.

5. Joint Work Placement Guidelines

5.1 The Work Placement Guidelines (July 2008) produced jointly by AIWCW, CSHISC, and VETAB (NSW) are also relevant as a guide to appropriate placements. (These full Guidelines can be found on the websites of all three organisations). An extract now follows:

5.2 ....work placements in which the student is required to undertake the following activities for more than 5% of the placement will not be approved:

• hand and foot massages
• cooking  
• delivery/provision of food, clothing or domestic equipment
• feeding, dressing or bathing
• cleaning or other domestic duties
• entertaining/companionship
• arranging lunch/tea for aged people
• transporting aged, young or disabled persons to and from appointments
• providing community transport services generally
• respite care
• child care, nursery/creche activities
• out of hours school care
• holiday care.

5.3 Most of these activities are obviously inappropriate as part of "welfare work", as opposed to nursing, child care, occupational therapy, recreational and sporting activity, etc. For only two of the listed activities does there seem to be some possible latitude allowable.

5.4 It can be argued that "companionship" and social engagement, - for example, sitting beside an elderly person and just chatting - provides the person with evidence of caring, and leads to an overall enhancement of rapport. While this may be true, the proportion of time devoted to it should be minimal, even if perhaps it is slightly above 5%.

5.5 "Providing community transport services generally" may involve research of community needs and further negotiations, including the planning of the service in the light of the negotiations and the findings of research. This also might extend a little more than 5% of the total placement time.

5.6 "Dispensing medicine", whether under supervision or not, should be added to the list, and in fact should never be allowed.

6. Appropriate time allowances

6.1 The clearly inappropriate activities which are outlined by the above joint statement restrict extraneous activities to no more than 5% of total placement time, apart from some slight variation for one or two of the activities mentioned.

6.2 The actual amount of time considered reasonable to be spent on non-welfare work or peripheral activities would depend to some extent on the specific activities, and the nature of the clientele. A certain amount of latitude should be allowed for professional judgement – as long as professional judgement by college field education staff is truly engaged, not merely an expedient assessment because of difficulties in finding appropriate placements. This is why AIWCW insists that field education staff have an appropriate professional background in social welfare work.

6.3 As a rough guide, for more ambiguous activities where there is more likely to be an overlap with psycho-social aspects, and as discussed above, it might be appropriate to impose a maximum of 10% or possibly 15% of total time. If this is exceeded, then AIWCW would expect a full rationale, which also addresses the arguments made in this document. Merely re-stating that the student(s) achieved broad competencies via the activity will not be sufficient.

6.4 Special mention should be made of extended hours or overnight placement experiences. Extended daily hours should not be allowable on a regular basis, although occasional `overtime' of several hours may be appropriate if this is a common practice in the agency.

6.5 Any placement which involves an overnight stay cannot count the hours when most clients are asleep (even if the student is `on-call'), and any more than 8 hours of field education time per 24 hours cannot be counted, unless there are exceptional circumstances, and a rationale supplied. Rarely, students may be involved in crisis situations (so called "active nights") that may require longer hours of duty.

7. Disparity in placement descriptions

7.1 Brief placement summaries supplied by the college have at times been made in very general terms. They might consist merely of statements of several basic competencies achieved, without any context of actual activities, tasks, roles, or professional educational experience. When students are asked for their description of what they actually did, there can be a great contrast.

7.2 An example is included to illustrate both this disparity, and what was a mostly inappropriate student placement.

The College indicates the following as the tasks undertaken:

1. Participated in volunteer training session and workshops; and

2. Develop strategies to assist with appropriate social integration and confidence building.

The student's version is:

1. Go through personal file of my camper - contact camper and camper's family before going out on camp - that made them more comfortable with me

2. Assist camper with all activities on camp and ensured safe and quality experience for camper - included drawing diaries, rock climbing, canoeing, and fire fox, get to know games, ball games, mini golf, trampoline, camp fire, low ropes and many more

3. I also applied the duty of care, accidents and injuries procedure at this outdoor experience.

4. I utilised my listening skills as some of campers were not good verbal communicators.

7.3 Such physical and game-playing activities can not be allowed as an appropriate field work placement for a welfare worker. The description from the college is inadequate. Note also that the AIWCW insurance coverage specifically excludes "camps".

8. AIWCW use of student's Field Placement Report

8.1 AIWCW is making increasing use of the 1000 word Placement Report required of students for each placement. It can provide AIWCW with a way of monitoring the quality of field education independent of college assessment, although the professional judgement of college staff and agency supervisors will remain the primary assessment criteria. This report is designed to show that the student has a reflective understanding of the placement experience beyond the `competencies' framework, and can articulate what was learned; not just about the agency and its activities, but also about their own educational progress. The student should be able to link placement experience with essential knowledge and values.

8.2 In the past AIWCW has not usually required the graduate to provide a copy of their report along with the summary of the placement (plus their diploma), but if there is any obvious doubt about the educational worth of the placement then the report can be requested, at the discretion of the Membership Coordinator at the AIWCW National Office.

8.3 In cases where the summary of the placement or the Placement Report do not supply enough information, particularly regarding what actual activities were undertaken by the student, the Membership Coordinator may request a separate signed report.

8.4 The Placement Report is to be written in the student’s own words; plagiarism from others or from publicly available documents such as the AIWCW website, will not be allowed.

8.5 The Placement Report should generally not be directly modified with insertions by supervisors or college staff. Where there appears to be an obvious deficiency, the agency supervisor and/or college staff may make an appropriate comment and note what action has been taken to remedy the deficiency and/or reporting inaccuracy.

8.6 A supplementary report may also be written by the supervisor or liaison visitor, for final evaluation by the Field Education staff.

8.7 The agency supervisor, college field education staff, and the student must each sign and date the Placement Report and/or summary, showing that they have read it, and that it broadly captures the placement experience.

9. Amendment to regulation 1.5

9.1 This minor amendment has been made to existing regulations to overcome some misinterpretations.

Par. 1.5.1 will now state:

Placements as a nursing case aide, child care worker, aged care assistant, clerical assistant, receptionist, or recreational planner/ guide/supervisor will not be acceptable to AIWCW. For example, a placement which involves even a significantly minor amount of planning and supervising recreational and craft activities, of accompanying elderly people on outings, walks, films, shopping, etc., or of merely observing (`shadowing') a supervisor or other workers, will not be considered suitable.

9.2 The example in the original statement has been re-worded because it (and especially the mention of "75%+") has been interpreted as a threshold of some kind, when it was only used as an example of a grossly inappropriate proportion of time devoted to non-welfare work activities by students. It was not meant to imply that something slightly less – or even 50% or 25% of time occupied by such activities, was in any way acceptable. Child care work has also been specifically excluded as not being appropriate.

10. Amendment to regulation 2.3

10.1 Par. 2.3 will now state:

In special circumstances (such as in a day center for the intellectual disabled, or in rural locations), the day-to-day functional supervision may be performed by someone with at least 5 years of relevant experience and some appropriate qualification, even if qualifications are not in social welfare work or something similar, but only if in addition to educational supervision, professional supervision for at least one hour per week is performed by a suitably qualified and experienced person approved by the educational institution. In such cases, professional supervision totaling 2 hours per week is required. In rare situations where no-one else is available at or near the agency, this can include a staff member from the college, but then final assessment must be undertaken by a separate staff member.

10.2 The amendment seeks to prevent placements being supervised by casual, inexperienced, clerical, and management staff, with no background in community services, while providing enough flexibility to allow those with intensive skills developed after long experience, the opportunity to benefit students. In such instances, the supervisor should have at least a relevant Cert III qualification. The additional supervision could be performed by "Student Supervisors" as dealt with at Par. 2.5.4 - 2.5.7.

10.3 This regulation was originally designed for the relatively rare situation where a very experienced and especially effective practitioner is willing to supervise students, but does not have the minimum qualifications required at 2.2. It might also apply in rare situations involving remote rural locations. It was NOT meant to be used as a widespread practice to overcome the shortage of AIWCW preferred supervisors. Professional supervision should be almost always conducted in the agency, by those employed by the agency.

11. Recommended additional changes to regulations

11.1 The amended regulation Par. 1.5 becomes 1.5.1, with a series of following sub-clauses that summarise the discussion in this paper.

1.5.2 The field education placements restrictions outlined in the joint Work Placement guidelines (VETAB/CSHISC/AIWCW, July 2008) are to be generally adhered to on a national basis. No more than 5% of placement time can be occupied by any combination of: food delivery, cooking, serving, and arrangements; dressing, bathing, massaging; cleaning and domestic duties; entertaining; delivery and transport of items and clients; respite, child, after-school, and holiday care. For companionship and social engagement there may be slightly more time allowed.

1.5.3 Other placements in agencies that have recreational and/or physical activity as a major focus or method of service to clients should be greatly focused upon the psycho-social aspects of client care, including clients' interactions with their social environment, and the issues of ethics and management which arise from this.

1.5.4 No more than 15% of overall time at such a placement should be devoted to participation in the activity itself.

1.5.5 Where placements in such agencies involve assessment, research and planning for such activities, the involvement of students should generally be restricted to psycho-social contributions to planning, but surveys of client preferences and opinions regarding such activities are allowable as a small proportion of student time.

1.5.6 The Field Education Placements Discussion Paper (June 2009) may be used as an additional guide to these regulations.

Changes to Par. 3 are recommended with a new Par. 3.3 and 3.4. The old Par. 3.3 becomes Par. 3.5.

3.1 Student attendance is expected at locations usually occupied by agency staff, and weekly days and hours are to be negotiated between the student, the college, and the agency.

3.2 Normally the student will be on duty during the same hours per day as the staff of the agency.

3.3 Placements which involve an overnight stay cannot count the hours when clients are usually asleep, and even if the student is `on call', except for rare crisis situations.

3.4 Placements are generally restricted to no more than eight (8) hours in any 24 hour period. This can be varied occasionally by additions up to 3 hours if such overtime is also part of the duties of paid staff.

Minor changes to Par. 9 are also recommended.

Par. 9.4 should remain the same, except for the omission of [..... the field supervisor] "who should read and sign it". A new Par. 9.5 is recommended:

9.5 The agency supervisor, the responsible college field education staff member, and the student must each sign and date the Placement Report and/or summary, showing that they have read it, and that it broadly captures the placement experience.

12. Prepared by Ian Murray, Chairperson, Membership Assessment Panel, Australian Institute of Welfare and Community Workers, 9th June 2009, amended 29th June.