Faculty perceptions of service user involvement in human services education

• Published in: The Routledge Handbook of Service User Involvement in Human Services Research and Education pp. 218 - 223
• Main Author: Alam, Nafees
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Routledge 2021
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Service User Empowerment; Social Work Services; Social Environment Courses; Consumer Movement; Human Services Education; human behavior and the social environment; Current Social Work Practice; Service User Involvement; Holds; Social Work; CSWE; NYSOMH; Professional Development; client consumer movement; Social Work Values; Service User Input; Service User Knowledge; Cross-sectional Exploratory Study; Core Social Work Values; Service User; empowerment and consumerism; Social Work Education; Social Work Faculty; NASW Code; Social Work Curricula; Address Life Challenges; Social Work Organizations; Assessing Service Users
• ISBN: 9780367523565; 1138360147; 0367523566; 9781138360143
• DOI: 10.4324/9780429433306-23

The purpose of this exploratory study was to establish the state of US social work faculty perceptions on service user involvement in social work education. Despite the trademark of the profession being service user-oriented, United States’ social work curricula lacks service user involvement in the education of social workers. This was a cross-sectional exploratory study using a questionnaire involving 404 social work faculty across the United States. The majority of demographic variables show no statistical significance toward service user involvement in social work education. However, experience teaching human behavior and the social environment shows a statistically significant (p=0.005) negative influence on favoring service user involvement in social work education, while teaching content pertaining to client consumer movement shows a statistically significant (p=0.001) positive influence on favoring service user involvement in social work education. There was a statistically significant (p=0.030) relationship between faculty favoring service user empowerment and consumerism and service user involvement in social work education. There was also a statistically significant (p=0.000) relationship between faculty favoring service user involvement in social work organizations and service user involvement in social work education. Overall, findings show that sampled social work faculty are split over service user involvement in social work education (mean composite score percentage of 57.360%), while they are more in favor of service user involvement in social work organizations (mean composite score percentage of 69.405%) and even more in favor of service user empowerment and consumerism (mean composite score percentage of 76.322%). More research is needed to find why teaching human behavior and the social environment decreases attitudes toward service user involvement in social work education but teaching content pertaining to client consumer movement increases attitudes toward service user involvement in social work education. Social work curricula across the United States lacks service user involvement in the education of social workers, despite the trademark of the profession being service user-oriented. The consumer movement in particular has helped bring light to the importance of service user involvement, specifically within social work education. It would seem that service user involvement should be a logical component of social work education since activism and focus on recovery are in harmony with social work values, including partnership and self-determination. Essentially, the only demographic characteristic of statistical significance predicting more positive attitudes toward service user involvement in social work education by faculty is experience teaching content pertaining to client consumer movement. Composite bivariate analyses showing results that are statistically significant are both attitudes on service user empowerment and consumerism and attitudes on service user involvement in social work organizations, found to show statistically significant correlation with attitudes on service user involvement in social work education.