PANDEMIC: ADJUSTING SOCIAL WORK PRACTIUM. AN ISOLATED INDICENT OR AN ENTRY TO A LARGER DISCUSSION?

On March 13, 2020, Mount Royal University responded to the pandemic declaration of the World Health Organization (WHO) and local health directives by stopping all face-to-face learning, including practicums. This sudden cessation was done for reasons of safety and liability. Rapid shifts were required, presenting functional, ethical, and privacy challenges for students and faculty who recognized that practicums are vital for social work students preparing to enter practice. Using a theoretical framework of compounding complexity, the paper considers eight key learnings from the authors’ experiences managing a social work practicum program, contemplating implications for current and future crisis-oriented fieldwork. This paper goes further to challenge a re-evaluation of social work as a result of the pandemic, social movements including the Black Lives Matter movement, as well as the changing socio-economic factors that influence service users’ lives. These conversations have emerged within the pandemic context and afford a moment to reflect on the place and role of social work.Alternate :Le 13 mars 2020, Mount Royal University a répondu à la declaration de l’Organisation mondiale de la santé (OMS) au sujet de la pandémie et aux directives sanitaires locales en arrêtant tout apprentissage en présentiel, dont les stages de formation pratique. Cet arrêt brutal a été fait pour des raisons de sécuritié et de responsabilité. Reconnaissant que les stages sont essentiels pour les étudiant.e.s en travail social se préparant à exercer la profession, des changements rapides ont été nécessaires, présentant des défis fonctionnels, éhiques et de confidentialité pour les étudiant.e.s et les professeur.e.s. À l’aide d’un cadre théorique de complexité croissante, l’article examine huit enseignements clés tirés des experiences des auteur.e.s dans la gestion d’un programme de stage en travail social, et envisage les implications actuelles et futures pour les stages en contexte de crise. Cet article va plus loin en questionnant et demandant une redéfinition du travail social en réponse à la pandémie, les mouvement sociaux dont Black Lives Matter, ainsi que de l’évolution des facteurs socioéconomiques qui influencent la vie des usagers.ères. Ces conversations ont émergé dans le contexte de la pandémie et offrent un moment de réflexion sur la place et le rôle du travail social.

Exploring Mental Health and Well-Being Among University Faculty Members: A Qualitative Study.

The current exploratory qualitative study describes how environmental factors, social interactions, personal experiences, and stigma affect mental health and help-seeking. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine university faculty members who self-identified as having mental illness-related concerns. Using Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems framework and thematic analysis, four domains were determined: (1) macrosystem (i.e., influences of academic culture); (2) mesosystem (i.e., influences of faculty leadership and interpersonal dynamics); (3) microsystem (i.e., influences of individual mental health experiences); and (4) exosystem (i.e., influences of stigma across structural, interpersonal, and intrapersonal levels). These domains included barriers to and facilitators of mental health and help-seeking. Findings suggest that competitiveness and individualism may perpetuate stereotypes that mental illnesses are inherent weaknesses, and that seeking help is a barrier to academic success. Recommendations for future research are provided. [Journal of Psychosocial Nursing and Mental Health Services, 60(11), 17-25.].

Simulation in Social Work: Creativity of Students and Faculty during COVID-19

Simulation learning plays an important role in social work education, allowing students to explore how theory and practice parameters can be integrated into actual situations they are likely to experience in the field. The arrival of COVID-19 and the sudden cessation of in-field practicum opportunities raised challenges for students to gain needed practice experience. Simulation offers an opportunity to enhance learning in place of some direct experience when that is not available. This paper reports on a simulation development practicum, where students, not able to be in an agency, sought out ways to achieve learning through the development and implementation of simulation learning. This was combined with a literature review. Results showed that student-generated simulation could be used to support direct practice learning. This project also illustrated that social work simulation can be used to help students safely explore areas of practice that they may not be exposed to in practicum through scenarios that cause them to examine how to work with clients where cross-cultural needs exist, and challenge ethical dilemmas in a ‘real-world’situation while being required to face their biases.