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to help students during their training by welcoming them to the
welfare section and introducing them to the work being done there.
This is becoming more and more a function for social worker sections
in local authorities. Departments which employ professionally
qualified workers are frequently approached by Universities
and Colleges of Technology to help provide practical work under
skilled supervision for their students. A specially close relationship
has been built up with the Barking Regional College of Technology,
which runs a two-year National Certificate Course in Social Work
and has close associations with Local Boroughs including Havering.
The following are some examples:—
(a) During 1965 a student from the Barking Course stayed
for three weeks at Collier Lodge and worked also at
Westmarsh Lodge in order to gain experience of residential
work with the mentally disordered. The Department
was able to arrange for her to have the temporary
status of an Assistant Warden during this time.
(b) Later in the year the Department provided a supervised
placement in casework in the Mental Health Section for
a student from this same Course. She stayed five months,
attending three days a week and working under the direction
of the Senior Psychiatric Social Worker (the other
two days a week she spent at Barking College, combining
in this way, as is usual on these Courses, both theory and
practice).
(c) Two students from the Barking Course in social work
came to the Department on three separate days to study
the work being done for the elderly, the physically handicapped,
and the mentally disordered.
(d) Twenty-one Student Nurses from Oldchurch Hospital also
came to the Welfare Section for half a day each and were
introduced to some of the services provided by the social
workers.
Contact was made with the London Boroughs Training
Committee. A close working relationship has now
been established, so that the Department is being increasingly
used for practical experience by people from other
Boroughs taking part in training activities run by the
Committee. Senior staff of the Social Work Section are
helping with Courses run by the Committee, and Social
Workers in the Department are taking part in training
opportunities provided by that Committee.
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