Social Work at Elmore

• The vast majority of students who have completed placements with us have been enrolled on Social Work degree courses, either undergraduate or postgraduate. We have supported students who have needed to complete a 70- or 100-day placement to qualify.

• Generally, students complete a 70-day placement in a non-statutory setting such as Elmore. They may also complete a 100-day placement with us because the nature of our work means the charity can count as offering statutory learning opportunities.

• To date, placements have sat within our Floating Support services, with students working with clients under our Mental Health or Complex Needs contracts, at times working with New Beginnings and Tenancy Sustainment clients. We plan to expand placements to our two other service areas: Brief Interventions and Personality Disorder services.

• Students receive clinical case and ‘practice education’ supervision, and Elmore employs two staff who are qualified Practice Educators in our Floating Support and Personality Disorder services and deliver practice education supervision. We will shortly have a third employee who will be our third qualified Practice Educator—in our Brief Interventions service area.

• All 70- and 100-day placement students are interviewed before being offered a placement with Elmore. Interviewing is important to us because of the complex needs of our clients.

• Placements usually commence in either September/October (for BA students) or January/February (for postgraduates). Students generally start on 3 days a week but often increase this to 4 or 5 days a week nearer the end of placements when classroom teaching comes to an end. These days are fixed and agreed in advance of the student starting.

• Students complete the usual Elmore induction over 4 weeks and then are allocated their own small caseload of clients to be lead worker for – this usually includes new referrals where the student needs to conduct an initial assessment. Students typically do not hold more than 5 cases at any given point.

• Students receive an increased level of supervision compared to caseworkers. This equates to an hour a week, alternating between clinical case supervision and ‘practice education’ supervision. Students are line managed by a team manager who undertakes clinical supervision with them, though this role has been taken on by experienced caseworkers.

Elmore employees who have supervised students say the benefits of supporting social work students are as follows:

• Having students in the team can help challenge and consider one’s own practice

• It can be a source of professional pride to supervise a student

• Non-managers can supervise students which can give career progression

• Students can bring in new models, theories, and ways of working

• Hosting placements encourages reflective practice and helps to explicitly link theory to practice

• Having students can bring in additional capacity to the teams which can potentially include lead working clients and/or second working

• Placements can lead to recruitment of permanent staff; indeed, several current Elmore staff were previously social work students at Elmore

• Elmore offers a unique learning opportunity for students including immersion in the agency’s culture, values, and ethics – it was felt that students can benefit from this and take good practice forward to future teams they work in

Daisy was an Elmore Domestic Abuse Caseworker, supporting the Family Solutions Plus team working alongside social workers. She joined the charity as a social work student on placement in 2022.

“I feel very privileged to have had the opportunity to complete my final placement at Elmore Community Services; the charity’s reputation is well-known in the services I have worked in, and I had always hoped that I would be able to work within the Elmore Team at some point in my career.

This placement provided me with many opportunities to develop my practice by working with diverse services and service users. In particular, my attitude and approach towards risk assessment and management has changed drastically.

However, I believe the most significant learning for me has been around self-esteem, wellness, and team-working. I have experienced significant difficulties in my personal life since the start of my final year of this degree, and I’m not sure I would have coped had I not worked in such a supportive team.

This has taught me that self-care and wellness is more than a tokenistic notion encouraged by organisations in order to preserve its workforce by placing responsibility of maintaining resilience on the individual without providing the resources to do so. Instead, ensuring the wellbeing of a workforce is an essential, and arguably non-negotiable, part of the culture within organisations, in particular within those that support vulnerable groups.

This learning has been so valuable and impactful that I applied for a role within Elmore Community Services and am delighted to be joining the Domestic Abuse team this summer and remaining within Elmore. I’m incredibly grateful for what has not only been an informative and educational placement, but an inspirational and nurturing experience.”

Jaime O’Leary is a Children and Family Centre Manager at Oxfordshire County Council. She joined the charity as a social work student on placement in 2022.

“Before joining Elmore, I had very little understanding of who they were and how they linked in with other support services in the county. I had heard that they offered mental health support and some of my colleagues had referred to them in the past, however, I didn’t realise the vast array of services and support they offer.

I thoroughly enjoyed my placement with Elmore. Although I was based in the floating support team, I was encouraged and given opportunities to shadow colleagues in other areas, such as those who work within Tenancy Sustainment and Rise & Shine. I was encouraged as part of my induction to network and visit other agencies, especially those within the Oxfordshire Mental Health Partnership to understand their role, the work they undertake. and how they link in with Elmore to support the wider community.

My work was varied, with a client group who had very differing needs. This provided me with the opportunity to learn and develop skills in adapting to new situations and learn more about how complex mental ill health affects individuals.

At first, I found the induction a challenge, I came from a background where I would get straight into work and this induction was very new and different for me. On reflection, the induction period was fantastic, it gave me the opportunity to learn about other services, shadow colleagues on different types of visits, and learn from their expertise. I discussed my feelings with my practice educator who was fantastic. She was supportive and could understand why I found it different but equally kept reminding me of the benefits and encouraging me to utilise the time to really get to know the service and the impact it has. This is a luxury I don’t think I will ever be given again.

My placement has really opened my eyes to the fantastic work that happens within the community. As someone who has worked for a local authority for many years, stepping into a charity was eye-opening and I saw people with passion for making changes. I really enjoyed how involved the whole team, students included, were in helping to shape the service, were listened to, and encouraged to take an active role in sharing ideas and contributing to business planning meetings. The placement is inclusive, and everyone feels like a valued and valid member of the team.

The factors which helped to make my placement a success include being open-minded and keen to learn. I knew, walking in, that I had limited knowledge in this area and wanted to soak up as much experience as I could. Being a team player and being proactive also helped. Stepping in and supporting colleagues when needed only made the experience more valuable as I was able to experience so much.

My most significant learning was just how much support there is in the community, that there are people who are passionate about making positive changes for those who need them and that they continue to provide support as long as that person needs. Working in a truly person-led way, supporting them, understanding that their mental health will impact on their engagement but not ending that engagement prematurely because someone has suffered a set-back but being there to prop them back up when they are ready was awe inspiring.

Elmore gave me the confidence to work with people at their own place, to be their champion, and remind people that it is ok to not be ok, we all need help sometimes, and when the time is right, that support is there. It helped me understand working with adults as my entire career up to this point had been working with children. It was nice to finally be able to put the adult at the centre of the work and ask them what they needed.

Would I ever like to work for Elmore? Absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt. “

Nataleigh was an Elmore Team Manager who joined the charity as a social work student on placement.

“Without my placement at Elmore Community Services, I wouldn’t have learned as much about working with individuals with complex needs and Elmore’s team approach for supporting them.

Before I joined Elmore as a student completing my social work degree in 2011, I knew about Elmore’s support for clients with mental health and complex needs, but I was looking forward to learning more about supporting clients with complex needs.

Inmy placement, I had ample opportunities to shadow other teams and get fully inducted into how Elmore’s Prisoner Support Team worked. The space for reflection and personal development which Elmore provided led to me applying successfully to become a caseworker.

Ten years after joining Elmore as a student, I moved into team management to support Elmore’s work with individuals with complex needs, particularly in housing insecurity and homelessness.”

Aid is a qualified Practice Educator at Elmore and led the charity’s Personality Disorder Service as a Service Manager. He joined Elmore as a social work student on placement.

"Before starting my final placement at Elmore, I’d been working in an NHS mental health crisis team, and I’d become aware of Elmore through this – particularly about how Elmore tended to work with the clients who were more complex and chaotic.

While on placement I held my own small caseload of clients with a wide range of needs, including housing, benefits, criminal histories, substance use, and mental health. I learned a great deal from this opportunity, not least how risk can be managed robustly and safely even when working with people who potentially would have been excluded from other services due to their pasts.

I loved the variety in the work and the fact that it was truly person-centred; each individual was treated as such and the support they received was decided in agreement with them, as opposed to them being put into whichever existing service most closely fitted their needs. Shortly after finishing my placement, I returned to Elmore and started working as a frontline caseworker before being promoted to a Team Manager and then recently a Service Manager.

During my time at Elmore, I have completed my Practice Educator qualifications (PEPS1 and PEPS2) to let me take on students and support them through their placements here. This role lets me show new social workers the values of working in holistic, empowering ways and to let them see how social work theories and models can link to real-world practice.

As Elmore works with a wide range of people with a wide range of needs, placements here enable students to gain understanding and experience of a great many areas relevant to contemporary social work. When they qualify, they can then take this experience and knowledge forward to help them in their work with vulnerable children and adults across the entire social work spectrum."

Tami is a qualified Practice Educator at Elmore and supports clients as a multiple needs caseworker in the Floating Support team.

“Elmore provides social work students with a placement that assists in developing their knowledge and skills with a wide range of social care needs. The placement can support social work students to, competently and with ease, evidence the Professional Capabilities Framework.

Elmore’s service aligns with the Social Work England Standards and the British Association of Social Workers Code of Ethics. The placement is an excellent opportunity to gain a wealth of experience providing holistic support to adults with complex and mental health needs.

The most significant learning from the placement offered by Elmore is the development of skills to focus on the needs of the individuals requiring support, ensuring their personal experiences are treated with dignity and respect, and that they are offered the opportunity to lead on the support provided by the service. The placement also provides an invaluable experience of working within a friendly and competent team, where knowledge and skills can be developed through peer support.

I chose to qualify as a Social Work Practice Educator because I wished to be part of the educational system that embraced social work students’ enthusiasm to learn within the context of social care and to be able to support their development within the voluntary sector holistically.

I enjoy providing students with a supportive learning space, where they can lead on their own learning in a safe and honest environment. The most rewarding part of this role is watching the growth of social work students who leave their placement with the service, more resilient, knowledgeable, and confident professionals.

Elmore is a unique holistic service that sits within the third -sector, offering students the opportunity to experience the differences with the support provided in the statutory sector. I believe it is important that Elmore continues to train future social work students because we provide people with the skills and knowledge to defend human rights and tackle inequality and social injustice. These competencies can then make a difference in all areas of social care.”

Frontline is a model of social work education that launched in 2013, focused specifically on training up individuals to work with children, young people, and families. Frontline students complete a 30-day placement within an adult setting, referred to as their ‘Contrasting Learning Experience’ (CLE).

Students complete 10 of their CLE days from September to mid-January and 20 further days before the end of August. CLEs are usually in agencies working with either adult substance misuse, domestic violence, adult learning difficulties, or adult mental health. Frontline students can be completing their 30-day CLE at the same time as their 70-day placement (which will be in children’s social care). They will then complete a further 100-day placement in children’s social care to make up their 200 days of practice learning.

Elmore hosted its first ever intake of Frontline students in our domestic abuse services, and four students finished their placements in August 2022. The students completed 10 days of shadowing, 5 of which were spent training (2 days on Domestic Abuse Champion training, 2 days of onsite training, 1 day of consolidating learning). The students then held their own cases for 20 days and were able to offer additional casework support to the wider team.

The students had a Frontline supervisor and Practice Educator, Elmore provided case management support and day-to-day line management. Students received monthly supervision with their Elmore supervisor; their Frontline Practice Educator was also present for these sessions. These supervisions usually lasted 45 – 60 minutes and offered a mix of clinical and developmental supervision.

In January 2022 Elmore and Oxfordshire County Council, the commissioner of our domestic abuse service, presented our experiences of supporting Frontline students in our services to the national conference of the charity Frontline ExChange 2022.

Elmore is not currently accepting Frontline students at this time.

Feedback from Elmore’s first-ever intake of Frontline students in our domestic abuse services was strong.

• Students were positive about the training they had undertaken, particularly the Domestic Abuse Champion training

• Students felt more confident about discussing domestic abuse with families they were working with including possible interventions on offer

• Students became more positive about the impact group work can have, particularly with perpetrators