An Evaluation of Critical-Reflection on Service-Users and Their Families' Narratives as a Teaching Resource in a Post-Graduate Allied Mental Health Program: An Integrative Approach

Abstract

In this article, the author argues for the need for students to have opportunities to dialogue with service users in social work education. Through such conversations spaces for critical-reflection are created in which individual, team, and professional discourses can be safely critiqued among a community of learners. Within professional courses of study the constructed nature of distinctions between service users and the professionals who “treat” them become apparent when consumers and their families tell their narratives of recovery to an audience of allied health students who are in their first year of hospital-based practice. The author proposes that social workers need to take a critical-reflective stance in relation to the teams and the professional discourses they work within. A critical-reflective approach enables students to analyze their practice within their organization's policies to look beyond the boundaries while paradoxically learning to work within them. This perspective is evoked by the use of service user narratives in educational programs of professional development. The implications for integrating consumer perspectives in social work education are discussed.