Listening to care experienced young people and creating audio-bites for social work education

Abstract

It can be challenging to incorporate young people’s voices into social work pedagogy even though service user involvement is an essential part of social work education. Technological advances present new ways to involve service users and overcome barriers to participation. The purpose of this research was to explore service user involvement amongst young people by developing an audio resource for a qualifying social work programme in Scotland. We used a co-production methodology to create eight audio-bites based on interviews with four care-experienced people, aged 14–19, about their involvement with social work. We share key findings from the interviews, about the young people’s involvement with social work and about being ‘subjects’ of statutory recording practices and processes, such as chronologies and Child’s Plans. We discuss how the audio-bites were used in teaching and present feedback from students and lecturers about their use. We argue that the audio-bites promote authentic learning as they depict real life practice situations, and help students to develop listening and reflection skills that will inform their preparation for practice with children and young people.