Training for Evaluative Social Work and Social Care - Offers and Demands

• During the last years evaluation has been on the agenda as a part of the discourse in social work and social services in Sweden. This demand on evaluation and the value of the social work is connected to the tough economic situation in the municipalities and their growing responsibility for the social welfare services. At the same time there are strivings to improve the quality of social work and the ongoing professionalization of social workers. This development can be seen as a move from authority based social work towards more knowledge based social work. In such a situation we can assume that there is a need for evaluation knowledge and evaluation capacity. What roles do the departments of social work education and the R&Dunits play for social work? Is evaluation an important and frequent topic? Supported by the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare1 we have “mapped” if and how the departments/schools of social work and the R&D-units offer courses on evaluation or support evaluative work in other ways. The purpose of the investigation was to “map” all educational activities aimed to develop knowledge and competence for evaluation, in the programs for social work at the universities/university colleges in Sweden and in the R&D- units linked to the social services. Our investigation was conducted during the year 2002 and reflects the situation at that time. In this article we summarize and discuss some of the results. Above all we discuss and try to explain the fact that only a minority of the students in social work (at al levels) meets evaluation in their education and those who meet evaluation – meet it in the most rudimentary way. We also discuss the fact that there are more activities (courses, training, support) for evaluation in the R&D-units, but they are not arranged in a focused way. We start by presenting results from the investigation of university training in evaluation and continue with results from the R&D-units. Finally we give some possible explanations to our findings.

Ämnesord

SAMHÄLLSVETENSKAP  -- Sociologi -- Socialt arbete (hsv//swe)

SOCIAL SCIENCES  -- Sociology -- Social Work (hsv//eng)

Publikations- och innehållstyp

kon (ämneskategori)

ref (ämneskategori)