Promoting Practitioner Research through a Social Work Teaching Partnership

Research is critical for effective and innovative social work practice, yet social workers do not always have time to engage with research and there are limited accounts of how practitioners can undertake research in practical and meaningful terms (Mitchell, Lunt, and Shaw 2010). Using a reflective,...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Practice (Birmingham, England) England), 2023, Vol.35 (1), p.57-73
Main Authors: Buck, Gillian, Whiteside, Nicola, Newman, Andrea, Jones, Helen, Stanley, Selwyn, Feather, Julie, Millard, Wayne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Academic staff
Child welfare
evidence-based practice
Feasibility
practitioner research
Professional practice
Professional training
reflective practice
Regions
Social work
Social work education
Social workers
Storytelling
Teaching
teaching partnership
Teams
Youth
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Research is critical for effective and innovative social work practice, yet social workers do not always have time to engage with research and there are limited accounts of how practitioners can undertake research in practical and meaningful terms (Mitchell, Lunt, and Shaw 2010). Using a reflective, storytelling methodology (Beresford 2016 ), which centres experiential knowledge, we describe how one regional social work teaching partnership nurtured practitioner research over a three-year period. We introduce a regionally administrated 'hub', that connected social workers and academics and supported the development of seventeen research teams. The studies that resulted, focused on a range of important issues including child protection, young people in transition to adult services, adults in community and residential settings, lived experience-led provision, and social work education. In terms of limitations, our reflections are descriptive and illuminative, rather than critical, our findings are also not representative but rather reflect a snapshot of practice. Despite limitations, this commentary reveals the feasibility and value of proactively nurturing practitioner research and offers a blueprint for cultivating similar initiatives in other regions.
ISSN:0950-3153
1742-4909
DOI:10.1080/09503153.2022.2128324