Similarly, it is not yet clear what kind of migrations can be expected. Will there be, once again, a wave of Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union? Will we see a return of Palestinian refugees to their homeland?

In contrast to grand developments at the national and international levels, which are hard to foresee, we can probably predict a continuation of some of the trends that were discussed in this paper. Ethnic and religious groups will continue to require services adapted to their cultures and their unique needs; more and more social work agencies will adopt modern information technologies; processes of privatisation and commodification will continue; the gap in credentials between the universities and the profession will become even narrower, etc. What all of this means is that Israeli schools of social work will have to do better than they did in the past in expecting these changes and confronting them in their curricula and in their organisational structures.

SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION AND RESEARCH: PRESENT EXPERIENCES AND TENDENCIES IN FINLAND AND OTHER NORDIC COUNTRIES

Marjaana Seppanen7

Introduction

Social work exists as an academic discipline in the Nordic countries after several decades of development. However, the process has differed in each country. The common feature is that the development of the academic research of social work has been closely tied to the development of the education of social workers. Even at present, the main actors in the field of social work research are university teachers (professors and lecturers) and researchers located in the universities.

The aim of this paper1 is to give an overall description of the research trends in Finland and other Nordic countries. Also, the education system in the Nordic countries is described in order to clarify present tendencies in the research of social work. In the description of the research, emphasis is put on the situation in Finland. The trends in Sweden are

7 Seppanen, M. Social work education and research: present experiences and tendencies in Finland and other nordic countries // Locus SOCI@L. – 2008. –1. P.14-23.

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described as well, because these two countries have the longest research traditions in social work.

Social work education in Finland and in other nordic countries.

In Finland, social work has been developed as an independent field of study with its own problem-setting, epistemological and ontological assumptions, research targets and ways of knowledge formation. Historically, social work is closely linked to social policy, which was the mother science of social work until the beginning of the 1990s. Gaining an independent position was a long process. Even after the first chairs were established, it took quite a long time before the first doctors in social work finished their studies and were able to apply for the professor posts. Before that, social work professors had their educational background mainly in social policy. It has been argued that, because of their acting as gatekeepers, it took a fairly long time until social work researchers were fully accepted as members of the research community. That influenced the further development of social work as a discipline. Today, most of the professors in social work have accomplished their doctoral studies in the field of social work.

At present, there are three different types of education for social welfare professionals (Picture 1) in Finland (Act on qualification requirements for social welfare professionals 272/2005). Practical nurses are educated in vocational schools at the level of secondary education. The polytechnics in Finland educate social instructors. They obtain a Bachelors degree and are able to perform many different tasks within the social welfare services. Still, only university education with a

Social work education is provided in six universities (Helsinki, Jyvaskyla, Kuopio, Lapland, Tampere and Turku). Social work qualification includes both the Bachelors and the Masters degrees. The students complete basic, intermediate and advanced studies in social work including the writing of a Masters thesis. The thesis is the first real research work which the students conduct, and it is often a small empirical study. (Academic social work education in Finland.)

After the Masters degree, two different degrees can be obtained in universities. At the end of the 1990s, a professional postgraduate degree for social workers was developed. The degree is a Finnish speciality within the European degree system. It is a pre-doctoral degree (Licentiate degree) and its aim is to strengthen the scientific foundation of professional practice. The starting point is to develop the knowledge basis of social work. That includes practically oriented research, in order to explicate tacit and

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practical knowledge. The programme also aims to promote professional skills that draw on a research-oriented approach to social work. While the Masters degree prepares students with general skills in social work, the professional postgraduate degree gives an opportunity to specialize in a particular field of social work. In the ongoing programmes, there are five fields of study:

•Social work with children and young people

•Empowering social work

•Social work in the field of marginalisation

•Community social work

•Welfare services.

There are 20-25 post-graduate students in each programme. The degree programme can be completed in four years and it can be carried out while working. It is intended for practitioners who have completed their Masters degree in social work and who have at least two years of work experience in social work. During the studies, every student carries out a Licentiate thesis connected to the theme ofthe programme and to everyday practise in social work. Consequently, more than 50 theses have been written in these programmes, which is a substantial increase in the amount of social work research in Finland.

A significant share of research in social work is carried out by doctoral students in Finland. There is also a national programme for doctoral studies. It presently supports twenty-five doctoral candidates by funding and/or supervision. The programme has existed since 1995, and more than thirty dissertations have been completed altogether. The programme is divided into three thematic groups:

•Children and youth social work

•Marginalisation as a target problem in social work and social

services

•Psychosocial rehabilitation in social work and social services These themes reflect the current themes and interests in social work

research in general as well as produce research and strengthen research traditions in these fields. A lot of research aiming at dissertations is also carried out outside the national doctoral programme. The students outside the national programme receive supervision in the local universities, getting funding from sources other than the national programme. Many of the doctoral students work with their dissertations without any funding for their research.

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The Finnish universities co-operate closely with each other; they have constructed a national network of social work (Sosnet). The network promotes training in the field of social work, university-specific profiling and a reasonable division of work. Its purpose is to anticipate and develop key qualitative, quantitative, and content-related aspects of training. Sosnet is an important actor in the field of social work education and research. It concentrates mainly on the issues of education but - especially through guiding and supporting the doctoral education - it also has a great influence on academic research.

Differences and similarities in social work education between the Nordic countries. Sigrun Juliusdottir and Jan Petterson (2003) have analysed (the) trends in education in different Nordic countries. They identified two different trends, the Specialized Field Model and the Integrated Research Model.

The concept of Specialized Field Model describes the education system in Denmark and Norway. In these countries, education of social workers has been oriented towards vocational training and it lasts less than four years. The education has been positioned outside the university system or with loose ties to it. The professionals with field knowledge play an important role in the model. In the education, connection to research has less importance than the field relevance.

The education in Finland, Iceland and Sweden is described as Integrated Research Model. In that model, the academic emphasis is very strong and the education is part of the university system. The education model is striving to attain or has already attained an identity of its own as an academic subject. Teachers are recruited on the basis of their academic merits in social work, and they are primarily researchers or experts in some core areas of social work and secondarily teachers.

According to Juliusdottir and Petterson, both models have specific advantages, and a new combination model could be created based on them. In the new model, both high relevance to field and research orientation is ofgreat importance. Norway and Denmark have already moved towards the Integrated Research Model, striving towards a closer connection to research and position inside the university system. The model in Sweden and Finland has been gradually changing, as greater importance has been placed on the relevance to fieldwork. The combination model is called Integrated Field Model and it is achieved through two kinds of processes: reflexive academisation (Denmark and Norway) and responsive corporation (Finland, Iceland and Sweden). The development is supported by NASSW (The Nordic Association of Schools of Social Work), which promotes co-

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operation and works towards a more integrated structure of education in the Nordic countries.

For the research of social work, this development provides potential to a wider production of knowledge across the Nordic countries. While the education is gaining stronger academic status in Norway and Denmark, the research structures are strengthened and more academic research is produced.

Research trends in Finland and Sweden. Based on the stronger position of social work as an independent academic discipline, Finland and Sweden have long research traditions in social work. In both countries, social work as an academic discipline is today relatively well established, although quite young compared to many other disciplines. The discipline is still growing in the number of teachers and students.

In Finland and Sweden, there are a lot of similarities. When it comes to the fundamental preconditions of social work, the common context is an important aspect. The social system is based on the Nordic welfare state model. In the model, the role of the public sector in service production has traditionally been strong. Social work is done mostly as part of social services in the public sector. However, today the basic ideas of the Nordic welfare state model are being challenged. The Nordic Welfare State still exists, but its responsibilities are being redefined to a certain extent. There are already visible signs of change. For example, a development towards service production by multiple services producers instead of the pure public sector service provision has been proceeding already for a couple of years.

The current research trends in Finland have been described by Mikko Mantysaari and Raili Haaki (2007), who analysed 79 dissertations in the discipline of social work written during the period 1982-2006. As they looked at the gender of the writers, they found out that the dissertations were written mostly by female researchers. In Finland, 81 % of the doctors in social work are female. However, the share of women doctors is smaller than the share or women among social workers.

Most of the analysed dissertations were monographies. One fourth of dissertations consisted of articles. Still, the share of article-dissertations is increasing. Most of the dissertations were written in the Finnish language, only some were written in English. Regarding methodology, qualitative methods were dominant; they were used in 53 of 79 dissertations. The trend is opposite, for example, in the USA; there social work research is mainly quantitative. In qualitative research, the methods

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used were most commonly ethnographical or ethnomethodological. Discourse analysis was also used in many dissertations. A combination of methods was uncommon; qualitative and quantitative methods were rarely used in a same study. As for research without empirical data, it was also a rarity. Only a couple of dissertations were based on theoretical or historical analysis.

There was quite a big variation in the topics. According to Mantysaari and Haaki (2007), the following themes were present:

•clients experiences of everyday life

•social problems

•social work practises, methods and expertise

•organisations in social services

•children, families and young people

The authors point out that some themes were lacking. These were research about poverty, unemployment and alcohol abuse. Considering the significance ofthese problems their absence was astonishing. Also, research on ethics and moral in social work was less visible than what could have been expected. Furthermore, one very actual theme could be added in the list of missing topics: due to the ongoing demographic changes, there is a growing interestin ageing and social work with older people. That did not appear in the analysed studies. The interest will most likely result in dissertations in social gerontology and social work in the near future.

The dissertations had connections to different theoretical traditions. Most of the studies were based on theories in social work and/or sociology. The writers used both Finnish and international theories in social work (Adams, Richmond, Heinonen, Toikko etc) and sociology (Bauman, Lash, Beck, Giddens, Erasaari etc.). The authors argued that social constructionist approach is quite strongly rooted in Finnish social work research. In 19 dissertations, social constructionism in its different variations was the most important theoretical framework. Still, it was quite common for the researchers to widely combine discussions from different academic fields and different theoretical traditions. What Mantysaari and Haaki found very interesting was the strong presence of highly practise-relevant themes in the research. They pointed out that there is a need to discuss and explain why the social workers in the field still experience a wide gap between research and practice and feel that existing research is not useful for them.

The description above is about dissertations but the same trends are found in the Finnish research in general. In their overview of current social work research in Finland, Raitakari, Roivainen and Kroger (2004)

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described the nature of social work research as having wide variation in topics and being close to everyday life. They discovered four different angles in the Finnish research. These were research in

•experiences of clients and people living in the margins of society

•interaction

•social networks

•social service system and the role of social work in it Researching the experiences of marginalised people is ethically

challenging. The researcher must be able to self-reflect as well as consider if he or she has a right to step into the lives of the people concerned. If possible, the researcher must find a way to interpret and write about the interviewees experiences without offending them. This approach requires ethical sensitivity and respect but, done in a right way, it is a political action. In order to be credible, social work research has to be in touch with the experiences of those who otherwise do not get their voices heard.

Interaction is one of the basic elements in social work. Interaction between a professional and a client has interested researchers over many generations. Today, there are many different approaches aiming at understanding the nature of social work by researching the interaction in professional contexts. Discourse analysis and narrative research are commonly used approaches in Finland.

The significance of social networks is crucial in people's lives. Social relations are usually the primary source of support for people needing any kind of help. In social sciences, especially in the discussion about social capital and resources, the question of social relations is central. In social work research, the interest is directed especially to social support and social care.

Social work research in Finland has not traditionally paid much attention to social service system as a context for social work. Still, there is an increasing interest towards the different research orientations in the research of social services; these include theoretical, administrative and developmental orientations. All of them produce information which is highly relevant to social work.

In Sweden, the trends are much the same regarding methodological traditions. Like in Finland, the dissertations in Sweden are mainly based on qualitative empirical methods and they are written as monographies, mostly in the Swedish language. In Sweden there is a wider variation in topics, partly based on the larger amount of research. In Finland, social work research has, for historical reasons, had a close connection with social

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policy, whereas in Sweden psychology has also traditionally had a strong influence on social work.

Sweden has also a longer tradition of social work research than Finland. In Sweden, social work as an independent academic discipline has since 1977 been part of the state university system, and the research tradition has grown since then. According to Tapio Salonen (2007), there is a wide variety in research themes in Sweden. The Swedish research includes the following themes:

•Development and results of the general social welfare systems (social policy)

•Social exclusion and social disadvantage

•Organisation of social work

•Elderly people and care for the elderly

•Social psychological processes, social treatment and social care

•Disability, illness and rehabilitation

•Children, family and child welfare

•Addiction and treatment of addicts

In Sweden, the approach of evidence-based practice is also well established. There is an Institute for Evidence-Based Social Work Practice (IMS) which provides the social sector with systematic research reviews regarding the interventions and methods that function in social work. Generally, it seems that the education and research in social work is still growing in Sweden. As a result of the wide researcher education, there are practising professionals with substantial research knowledge inside the social sector, which in its turn opens possibilities to develop the practice in a new way. There is also a growing amount of experiment and systematic studies in social work.

Future trends in research of social work. The social work research in Finland has developed during the past decades, and today it is quite well established and covers a wide variation of topics. As in all social sciences, the transformations in society affect the research in many ways. In Finland, some trends are currently visible, closely connected to ongoing processes, mainly changes in the structures and functions of the welfare state model and demographic changes. Also, the constant development of social work as an academic discipline will shape future research.

In recent years, the ideas of so-called practice research have been actively developed in Finland. The concept of practice research refers to certain characteristics of research. One of the main characteristics is that

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the research problem is connected to social work practice and is, by nature, applied research serving many different users of knowledge. The close connection to practice enables to build a reflexive relation to the concepts and theories in social sciences. Practice research is also methodologically innovative; it uses and creates many different tools. An important feature is that of joint knowledge production, in which researchers and social workers participate equally in the process. The practice research is also often personally touching; it makes the voices of people living in very difficult circumstances heard. Therefore the reporting can be challenging and sometimes requires unusual solutions.

In the early stage of social work research, critical voices from the field claimed that the research could not be utilized to develop the everyday practice. In the years of the intensive academisation process of social work, the questions of scientific relevance of the research were those in priority and the needs of the field were put in the second place. The two are not necessarily contrary to each other; it has been more a question of emphasising one over the other.

The relation between social work research and practice has always been discussed. Three different types of relations can be defined: the traditional relation, interactive relation and constitutive relation. In the traditional relation, research and practice are separate fields with different functional logics and understandings of knowledge. In the second type of relation, interactive relation, the role of social work research can be defined as solving social problems in co-operation with the field professionals. Practice and research are still separate fields. In the third type of relations, constitutive relation, research and practice are in a symbiotic relation, which affects the functional logic of both. The traditional division between the producer of knowledge (research) and the user of knowledge (field) is not there anymore, the roles are mixed and knowledge is produced jointly. While the traditional relation has been dominant in the Finnish research, there is a shift towards the second and even the third type of relation.

Evaluation of research is a growing activity, and the need to evaluate social work interventions comes from many different directions and motivations. It is not only the claim of effectiveness based on financial thinking so pervasive these days. Social workers themselves, who are educated with basic skills of producing and using research-based knowledge, find it important to have access to research findings that help them to plan interventions. Still, the research of what works in social work is, at the moment, quite sparse but growing. In the era of declining

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resources and shortage of workforce in coming years, it has become increasingly important to carry out interventions that are effective. However, there has been much criticism about measuring social work outcomes and defining social work as a product to be sold in a buyerproducer system, a trend which is emerging in social services in Finland as well as in AngloAmerican societies.

The development of social work methods is more active today than it has been during the 1990s. Development and research is carried out especially in many projects, mainly financed by state-funded development programmes. For example, in social work with children and gerontological social work, new methods and tools for social workers have been developed. Family Group Conference, different assessment tools and methods for early intervention among others can be mentioned in this connection.

There has always been a question of whether social work should be based on a general model or whether more specialisation in different fields defined by client needs or life phases is needed. As mentioned earlier, the education in Finland is based on the general model and specialisation can be obtained after the Masters degree. Even if the emphasis is on the general social work, new fields of specialisation have been developed and will most likely be developed in coming years. One of them is gerontological social work, originating from the demographic changes in the society. Another field that could be mentioned is community social work, which is something new at the moment, even though it is one of the oldest approaches in social work. In Finland, community social work was popular in the 1980s but was subsequently almost forgotten.

While universities are the most important actors in social work research, there is a growing variety of other institutions concerned with social work research. One of these is Stakes, which is a national research and development institution in the social welfare and health. Although the main focus in Stakes is not in social work, there is a group of researchers working with questions related to social work. These are mainly connected to child welfare and social work with adults.

The Finnish Polytechnics, also called professional universities, are increasingly putting resources in research activities. In general, Polytechnics are multi-field or regional institutions with a focus on practical connections with working life. Research is defined as one of their tasks. It specialises in questions connected to practical aspects of the field and development activities.

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In 2002, a network of Centres of Excellence on Social Welfare was established in Finland. There are 9 regional centres in Finland, working in close connection to local municipalities. Even though the emphasis in their practice is put on the development of social services, research is often combined with the development work as well.

In Finland, an important actor in the field of social work research has during the last ten years been The Finnish Society of Social Work Research. It is an academic association founded in 1998 which collects together both academics and practitioners in the field of social work. The aims of the Society are to 1) promote exchange of research results, expertise and experience between practitioners and academics, 2) improve the position/status of social work research, and to 3) develop international co-operation in the field of social work research. The Society also has close contacts with the Union of Professional Social Workers (Talentia).

Since 1999, the Society has organised the annual national Conference of Social Work Research. Since 2002, the Society has published a thematic Yearbook of Social Work Research, which has been widely used and which reflects the contemporary themes in social work. Jointly with the Finnish Social Policy Association, the Society publishes Janus, the Finnish journal of social policy and social work research. The Finnish Society of Social Work Research also co-operates closely with other Nordic societies of social work research. There are plans to establish a common Nordic journal of social work research. It will be published in English in order to give researchers outside the Nordic countries a chance to learn more about Nordic social work research.

USER INVOLVEMENT IN SOCIAL WORK EDUCATION:

MACEDONIAN PERSPECTIVE

Suzana Bornarova8

In social work education, more than in any other area, there are common aims between the individuals providing services, the teaching staff, the service users and the students. We should use these common aims to develop the courses together.

8 Suzana Bornarova. User involvement in social work education: Macedonian perspective // Ljetopis socijalnog rada. – 2009. 16 (2). PP. 279-298.

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Involving service users and carers in the education and training of social workers is higher on the policy and practice agenda in the developed world than ever before. Higher education institutions that run these programmes in Anglo-Saxon countries are increasingly required by their governments to involve service users and carers as stakeholders in all parts of the design and delivery of the programmes. There are several driving forces behind these trends. Namely, so far, service users have not been systematically involved in social work theorizing and education. However, disabled peopless movements, mental health service users/survivors and other service users have developed their own knowledges based on direct experience and they have generated their own conceptual frameworks and bodies of theory. There are fundamental problems in social work seeking to interpret service user knowledges. This requires direct involvement of service users and their organizations in social work theorizing, in addition to social work education. There are strong practical, philosophical and political arguments for involving the knowledges and theories of service users and their organizations in the process of social work theory-building.

This requires an inclusive approach and the need for service users to have support and opportunities to develop their own prior and separate discussions about social work theory.

The tendency is obvious. The user involvement in the Anglo-Saxon countries has reached the stage in which users and carers contribution is not only limited to education, but it has started to move beyond along with the intensii cation of discussions on their contributions to developing social work theory as well.

Unlike the Anglo-Saxon countries, the developments in this domain in the countries of transition, such as Macedonia, seriously lag behind. The dificult process of transition and the leftovers of the previous communist educational system can be certainly hold responsible. After Macedonia gained its independence in 1991, a series of reforms in different aspect of societal life were carried out, focusing predominantly on mitigating the ef ects of the economic transformation in the country. The reforms in the domain of education, supported by the belatedly prepared Strategy for Development of the Education for the period 2005-2015, have been largely concentrated on modernisation and structural changes of the educational systems at all levels. However, the issue of user involvement in education in general and social work education in particular, has not yet entered the agenda. Consequently, the Macedonian experiences in this domain are scarse and sporadic, while discussions, debates and related

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literature in the domain is lacking. For that reason, the following analysis will focus primarily on Anglo-Saxon experiences and will make a relevant reference as to the applicability of those experiences in the Macedonian educational context.

The aim is not only to present the experiences, but also use the existing knowledge on the barriers and benefits faced in these countries during implementation of user involvement programmes. This will be of particular importance for drawing lessons and conclusions on possible directions and issues that should be taken into account during development of the user involvement practices in Macedonia.

Modalities of user involvement. If you learn to drive a car, you are taught by someone who can drive; if you need to speak French, you are taught by someone who speaks French, but at the moment if you need to know about disabled people's lives, you are taught by someone who wrote a book about it. Disabled service user.

The analysis of the literature in the domain of user involvement in social work education in general and modalities of involvement in particular, is predominantly associated to the Anglo-Saxon authors Bransfield, Beresford, Boath and Levin. Their extensive writings on the issue are less theoretical, but rather practical, as they are derived from the implementation experiences of concrete university-based user involvement programmes. The insight into these programmes shows that modalities in which user involvement may take place are diverse.

Report User Involvement in Social Work Education provides service users views on service user involvement in social work education. Published by the National user Network of Great Britain Shaping our Lives, it is part of a larger initiative, developed by the Social Care Institute for Excellence to develop a strategy to support the participation of service users in social work education. The report brings together the endings of four regional consultation days that Shaping Our Lives had commissioned from four regional service user networks and organizations. Within this Report, refers to varying degrees of service user's involvement with local universities:

•recruitment

•the design of the degree

•delivering training

•membership of a steering group or user forum for the degree

course

•teaching as part of subprogrammes named «Citizens As Trainers»

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•practice teaching – having social work students on placements in the service user organisation

•evaluation of students.

Boath, Buckley and Buererell (2006) presents the spectrum of involvement emphasised within a User Involvement in Social Work Education Programme implemented at the Staffordshire University in Great Britain, that encompasses:

•Teaching and learning

•Recruiting and selecting students

•Curriculum and module design and planning

•Assessing students

•Role play

•Evaluating courses and quality assurance

•Programme management

•Providing placements

•Practice learning.

Levin refers to the assigned roles in programme design and delivery of service users and high education institutions set within the National Requirements for Social Work Training in Great Britain. Their roles are in:

•student selection,

•design of the degree,

•teaching and learning provision,

•preparation for practice learning,

•provision of placements,

•learning agreements,

•assessment of students,

•quality assurance.

In the further text, several key areas of involvement will be elaborated and issues to be considered in practice emphasized. The attention will be concentrated on eve of the above modalities most commonly and widely applied in the Anglo-Saxon countries, which are at the same time relevant for the Macedonian educational setting as well. For each of the modalities, issues to be considered by countries like Macedonia to ensure effective outcomes, will be outlined.

Teaching and learning in Universities. Service users and carers could be involved in a wide range of teaching opportunities in the classroom. A range of involvement in teaching can arise from the

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development of service user and carer network links. Service user share of experiences related to social problems in classrooms is indispensable. The beneffits of such an inclusion have been proven in Macedo-nian education of social workers as well, although the extent, frequency and organisation of such involvement practices are still insufficient. In addition, service users and carers can successfully contribute to materials and to the evaluation of course materials, a modality that has not been practiced in the education of social workers in Macedonia so far.

In terms of this involvement modality, clear information about the purpose of any involvement is essential for service users and carers, and for students. Preparation and training of service users and carers is important for a successful outcome, especially in role play exercises. Practical and ethical issues about involving service users and carers need to be addressed in role play work:

•service user has 2 roles, that of role play participant and observer,

•giving and receiving feedback is a skill that needs to be taught,

•role play may engage dificult feelings on the part of the service user which may persist, which justifiesthe proper preparation of service users before their actual involvement,

•feedback from service users and carers is one source of feedback alongside that of other students and lecturers in role play work.

Practice learning. Service users and carers could be involved in

giving feedback in all practice learning opportunities and also contribute to the assessment of students practice. Within the obligatory field placement anticipated in the curricula, students of social work in Macedonia have an opportunity for practice learning in various social institutions. However, the assessement of their practice and achievements there is usually formal and carried out most often by professionals employed within these institutions, than actual service users or even less carers. Where such feedback is obtained, it is predominantly about the quality of relationships between service user and student and is overwhelmingly positive.

In this respect, issues to be considered for effective outcomes are:

•A requirement for service user and carer feedback in all practice learning opportunities should be clearly indicated in university documentation for practice learning.

•Social work practitioners and social work organisations should also model service user and carer involvement in their work.

•Preparation of service users and carers should be available within organisations and supported by universities. This may include a lealfet in

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plain language on social work training, briefings offered in giving constructive feedback, joint work with service users and carers in devising specific questions for feedback.

•Preparation of students (before practice learning opportunities begin) should include teaching about the giving and receiving of feedback, looking at dif erent methods of gathering feedback, and consideration of how feedback is part of rel ective practice.

•Support for practice teachers as regards service users and carers should be available in the form of written guidance from universities, regular group meetings with university staff, dissemination of tools for gathering feedback.

•Careful planning is needed in gathering feedback from service users and carers over the course of the practice learning opportunity so that:

1)it can inform students practice and

2)there is suficient time to incorporate it into the final report by both student and practice teacher – both in terms of students learning and in terms of assessment by practice teachers.

•Practice panels should monitor placement final reports with reference to the incorporation of service user and carer feedback into student learning and the assessment process.

Student assessment. Service users and carers could be involved in

the assessment of students both in practice learning and in institution based learning. However, as emphasized previously, feedback from service users and carers is most commonly drawn on in the assessment of students during practice learning opportunities, rather than in classroom settings. In terms of the involvement of service users and carers in student assessment particular attention should be paid to the following:

•Any such involvement requires clear regulation at the university

level.

•A toolkit of methods to elicit more detailed constructive feedback and specify con-tributions of service users and carers in student's assessment, is also essential.

•Students may see feedback from service users and carers as an assessment tool of practice teachers and therefore do not often refer to it in terms of their own learning. Teaching in this area should emphasize the contribution of service user and carer feedback (alongside other sources) in reflective practice.

Readiness to practice is another area where service users and carers

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can contribute to the assessment of students, alongside others in the assessment process.

Decision making. Service users and carers could also be involved in the planning, management and evaluation of courses, based on involvement methods developed by service user and carers groups themselves for which there is a joint consensus with the relevant university. This is a modality in which Macedonia is completely inexperienced. Involvement of service users in decision-making does not take place not even in the weakest sub-modality of involvement for the purposes of selection of student social workers during their entry exams. Consequently, it seems that the development of this modality compared to the previous ones would be a most challenging task. Notes of consideration within this field of involvement relate to the following:

•Timely and organised promotion of the benefits of such involvement should be widely promoted among staffprior to its practical implementation.

•Any such programme should instigate methods of building up a long term alliance between staff and service user and carer consultants.

•Service user and carer groups should take a lead role in determining how they can best represent their interests at management level.

•Service user and carer involvement should have real influence on decisions rather than being tokenistic.

•Representation is enhanced by the existence of service user and carer groups of influence within institutions.

•Methods to ensure accessibility at university meetings to service users and carers must be considered.

•Service users and carers should be involved in the selection of student social workers.

•Creative ways of enabling service users and carers to be involved should be identified. For example in jointly establishing selection criteria, being involved in shortlisting, being involved in interviewing processes.

Services users and carers training and conferences. Important element of every user involvement programme is the provision of training to both service users and staff, as well as utilisation of service usersexperiences for the non-formal forms of education. In terms of this involvement modality, Macedonian experiences are considerable. This was in particular enabled after 1998, when a National Centre for Training in

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Social Development was established within the Institute for Social Work and Social Policy in Skopje. Being the first institution that provides continuing education in social work to both professionals and services users it greatly contributed to establishing the links between the social work educators, practitioners and service users. However, the numerous training events organised since then, have been focusing predominantly on relevant topics in social work and social policy in general, and were not designed as such to target user or carer involvement issues in social work education specifically.

Hence, what is again lacking in Macedonia is a specialised training for service users and carers alone that would enable and capacitate them with the required skills to participate in the social work education in the country. Such a training could focus on: principles of teaching and learning, presentation skills, confidence building, jargon busting, university procedures, giving and receiving feedback, skills on attending meetings. In addition to the specialised training for service users and carers alone, joint training for staff and service users and carers is also essential. The aim of the joint training is to determine the knowledge, skills and competencies required by service users, carers and educators to facilitate meaningful service user and carer involvement in education. Such a joint training could focus on: ....paying service users/carers, engaging, facilitating and sustaining involvement, websites and references, analysis of user led materials, developing and sharing networks, links resources and literature, representativeness, identifying barriers to involvement and overcoming them, disability and diversity awareness, group dynamics, literacy awareness. Herein, it should be emphasised that both types of training should be organised prior to the practical implementation of any concrete service user involvement programme, to provide for the higher quality of their contributions.

Running a conference with service user presenters is another usefull example of user involvement in social work education. Using service users as presenters at training events and conferences organised in Macedonia is increasingly recognised, although examples of such involvement are a handful. For this to take place in a more organised manner, the following should be considered:

•Establish initial contact with potential service user presenters and agree upon contents to be contributed at the conference.

•Discuss options for modalities in which their participation at a conference may take place.

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•Agree preferred format: Which of the techniques, such as power point presentations, questions and answers, panel, round table, informal discussion will be used by the user presenters?

•Practice presentations and assist users in developing presentation

skills.

•Engage a supportive team to be at hand to presenters for the preparatory phase prior and during the conference.

•Provide for a good chair of the conference who will be able to skilfully guide and acknowledge service user contribution to the conference Principles of involvement. The participation of service users and

carers should be based on agreed values and principles of involvement. Such involvement should go beyond tokenism (Tokenism refers to a policy or practice of limited inclusion of members of an excluded group, usually creating a false appearance of inclusive practices, intentional or not) in developing working relationships. Each university should work with service users and carers to develop a written set of values, principles and practices. Seeing change from consultation, a key motivation for service user and carers being involved in social work education, can be measured and evaluated. It should be made clear what is open to negotiation and what is not. In addition, service users and carers determine the pace and scope of their involvement and should be respected as key partners alongside educators, practitioners, employers and students. They should be offered support and training opportunities to promote their involvement in social work education while information is available to them in accessible formats.

Levin emphasizes four principles of best practice involvement that are of crucial importance for a successful development of user involvement in social work education programmes. The following principles should serve as a guidelines for Macedonia and any other country that is yet to bring in and gain experiences in this domain:

1)Involvement should be planned and structured: it must be based on a true partnership between academics and service users and other stakeholders. It needs to be a key part of the overall planning of a course and curriculum.

2)Involvement should be based on work with organisations that are controlled and run by service users: user involvement is too often based on the participation of an individual or individuals…. Working through organisations provides the basis for broader involvement that is facilitated by people who are better placed to represent a range of service user's

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perspectives. Another issue to consider when contacting organisations is that service users stress the importance of users concerns being distinct from those of carers.

3)Fees and expenses: the expertise of service users involved in training should be fully recognised. The payment of fees is a mean of recognising the value and importance of user's contributions and as supporting the parity of users input with that of paid staff. Rates of payment should reflect the skills and experiences of people involved and should be comparable to those paid to other consultants.

4)Access to training: good practice also needs to address making all education and training opportunities accessible to all service users as both students and teachers/trainers. Having social work students who are service users should not be seen or used as a means of service user involvement. Their presence should be seen as a bonus and they should not be exploited or relied upon (for achieving involvement).

Participation planning and payment. Participation of service users in social work education may contribute to the personal and/or professional development of service users and carers. Universities should understand that actively promoting and sustaining participation of service users in social work education is a process which takes time to develop effectively. Effective participation requires:

•Suficient time for all aspects of involving service users and carers. It is vital to take time to build relationships, maintain contact, to plan, prepare, deliver and evaluate work.

•Building local networks including a wide range of service users and carers is crucial. Universities should review existing links and plan where and how involvement needs to be developed.

•Building new systems and structures and changing systems and structures within universities is needed to empower and enable service users and carers to participate in a meaningful way.

•Changes and absences of service users and carers should also be planned for, in order that work can be sustained.

•University staff acting as champions/leaders for service user and carer involvement is crucial in achieving progress In addition to participation planning for effective involvement, service users and carers should be offered appropriate payment for their involvement in all aspects of social work education. Service users and carers have diverse views on receiving payment, and these views must be considered. In this respect:

•Each university should develop its own policy and procedures

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concerning payments to service users and carers. Service users and carers should be provided with a straightforward and speedy way to have expenses reimbursed and fees paid.

•Payments may include fees for attending meetings, teaching, consultancy, developing course materials; travelling expenses (this should include public transport, taxi fares and car mileage); allowances for childcare, personal assistance and replacement carer costs, and other costs (e.g. telephone, stationery, photocopying).

•Universities should ensure that their payment arrangements comply with benefits and tax regulations.

Benefits of involvement. Social workers just pay lip service to the

social model. They know all the words but they havent got a clue what it really is. Hopefully, with our involvement, they might actually get to know what the social model is, and actually start to work with it. Take it from theory into making it into reality.

The benefits of involving service users in social work education are innumerable. In terms of students, it broadens student's perspectives. They learn what it is like to be on the receiving end. They learn that service users are often kept in the dark, that they do not understand the jargon. They can learn from service users from day one and understand that social workers are agents of social control rather than beneficial intermediaries between users and services. Through service users, false assumptions – where things are being based on false perspectives and where there is not evidence to support a particular view - can be pointed out. In addition, user involvement can challenge the medical model in social work education. When a university brings in a group of people with learning dificulties to do a presentation, just about who they are and what they do, the people in the class just can not fully see people with learning dificulties as people until they see this. So if that is incorporated in social work courses it would help students see people as people and not just as social problems.

Boath, Buckley and Burrell enlist benefits for key stakeholders: staff, service users and carers and students, based on evaluation of a User Involvement Programme carried out at Staffordshire University, United Kingdom, as follows:

•Barriers to successful and meaningful involvement

•Barriers to service user involvement in social work education The design, planning and implementation of service user's

involvement in social work education programmes proves to be a challenging task. Being only recently promoted even in the developed

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world, universities in Anglo-Saxon countries referred to previously in the text that have actually faced this challenge point out many obstacles and barriers in its realization. The barriers to be elaborated below are results of the evaluation practices on implemented user involvement programmes, as emphasised by stakeholders themselves.

They could be taken into consideration by those high education institutions that are yet to enter this process. Among the most frequently identified barriers, most of which are quite similar if not equivalent to the existing ones in Macedonia, are the following.

Academics do not attach high enough value to service user's knowledge:

Some people with experience of teaching social workers may be systematically involved and value the structured arrangement. But more commonly, service users are asked to contribute occasional sessions (for ex. on disability awareness and discrimination), often at short notice.

Lecturers are not confident that service user trainers could teach their students. They often seem to rate knowledge from books more highly than knowledge from experts with experience. The culture in universities needs to change:

•The culture in universities is not very conducive to new ways of

working.

•When the university as a whole does not embrace a culture of

service user involvement, participation and diversity, its staff may be slow to move from tick box, superficial involvement to active, meaningful involvement.

•University systems and structures are inflexible and can prevent involvement.

•Some staff put up professional barriers. Their knowledge and approaches are not always up to date. They may restrict involvement to the service users they find least challenging.

Access requirements are not fully met:

•Service user's access requirements are all too often unmet. Access is understood only in terms of, for example, flat access for wheelchair users. Physical barriers such as heavy fire doors, entrance systems or inappropriate seating are not recognised as barriers. The practical, attitudinal and organisational barriers that service users experience on a daily basis are underestimated. Better access is fundamental to the promotion of participation.

•The disablist attitudes of some students and staff are a prohibitive

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barrier. Some students are disrespectful in service user's sessions. Service user organisations lack capacity and infrastructure:

•Many service user organisations do not have the capacity or the infrastructure to be effectively and meaningfully involved in the social work degree, even though they want to take part. Some are very small and some do not know about all the opportunities for involvement in the degree. Most lack secure ongoing funding.

•The commonest barrier by far is that many service user organisations are led by funding rather than their own agenda and priorities.

•Service user organisations are fully stretched. Without adequate human resources and time, they cannot properly develop sound inputs for the degree.

•The time frames of service user organisations and social work courses, including student placements, may not it neatly. Lack of training and support for service user trainers and their organizations:

•Training for service user trainers is a major area for expansion. Most people want training so that they can make the best possible contribution to students learning experiences. They need opportunities for developing training and related skills so that they can be articulate and confident in their contact with staff and students. They also need training, resources and time to develop the content and quality of what they offer collectively.

•Some people want training and support to gain a recognised qualifi cation and accreditation for their contributions. Others want to gain more experience or have opportunities for increasing their professional skills. Service user organizations want to develop and deliver training for themselves and others.

•Service users also need more preparation time, briefing, support and constructive feedback. Payment policies, practices and the benefits system discourage involvement:

•Service users and their organizations often experience dificulties in securing payment for their contributions to social work education. Policies and procedures can be inflexible and are inconsistent across universities.

•Individuals and organizations should be properly paid for their time, knowledge and expertise, in accordance with the principles of good practice in participation. All expenses, support, access and travel costs should be met.

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•Service user trainers should have easy access to sound advice and support about payment and benefits issues.

•The benefits system is the biggest barrier to involvement, including involvement in the social work degree. The system can be inflexible and inconsistent in the way it operates. This discourages people from accepting invitations to participate in training social workers because they are worried about negative effects on their benefits.

•Government should take responsibility for tackling the benefits issues so that the full range of service user groups can participate. More flexibility is required so that people can gain the experiences and skills to become employable.

•Universities must have money from the top to meet the costs of the involvement in the degree that government requires.

Barriers in the way of enhancing service user networking and knowledge base. As continuously emphasized previously in this article,

there has been an increasing emphasis in recent years on user involvement. Lately, however, user involvement has come in for increasing questioning. Service providers and researchers have begun to ask what evidence there is that it improves services. Service users and their organizations have raised the issue of what they are actually able to achieve by their involvement and questioned the usefulness of getting involved.

Since service user movements began to emerge in the 1970s. Today, service users have highlighted two activities as crucial for taking forward participation. These are, first, people being able to get together to work collectively for change and to support each other (service user networking); and, second, making their voices heard and developing and making known their experience, views and ideas (service user knowledge).

Barriers in the way of service user networking. It is of high importance and benei cial to service users being able to network with each other, both as individuals and in user-controlled organizations, in terms of both improving their quality of life and sustaining a more effective voice and presence to make a dif erence. Service user organizations and individual service users can be and often are isolated, with little knowledge of or contact with other service user organizations, locally, regionally or nationally. Service users identify a range of obstacles in the way of networking as individual service users. These include:

•problems of mobility in rural areas

•the fragility of user-controlled organizations

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•the effort of being actively involved.

For service user organizations, problems undermining networking include:

•Inadequate and insecure funding and resources. Service user organizations generally do not have secure or reliable funding. Because of this many service user organizations are liable to become funding led rather than led by their own concerns, priorities and principles, which can undermine their independence.

•Lack of adequate and secure funding which can be divisive as service user controlled organizations are placed under perverse pressure to compete with each other for the same inadequate funding.

•The unequal position of service user organizations in competition with big charitable organizations.

•Inadequate resources leaving user-controlled organizations dependent on a small core of activists.

•Limited organizational profile.

•Lack of resources to ensure full and equal access for all service

users.

•Lack of local user-controlled organizations generally and for particular user groups, for example people living with HIV/AIDS, disabled parents, etc. There are major gaps in the types of user-controlled organizations that exist in most areas.

•A strong perception among some service users that, in practice, not all organizations which claim to be user controlled are actually controlled by service users

Barriers in the way of service user knowledge. Increasing

political and policy interest in evidence - or knowledge - based policy and practice has highlighted issues relating to knowledge and different knowledge sources, including service user's experiential knowledge. Service users readily understand the idea of service user knowledge. They see themselves as having a particular role to play in the production of knowledge for social care, both because of the experiential nature of their knowledge and through seeing themselves as experts in their own experience. Generally individual service users and service user organizations feel that they have dificulties impacting on social care policy and provision effectively. They identify a series of barriers in the way of their knowledge having the role and influence they want it to have. These include:

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•Problems of access and tokenism. Service organizations frequently do not understand access issues and do not make it possible for service user's with a wide range of access needs to contribute on equal terms. They tend to interpret access in its narrowest sense. At the same time they often do not seem to be genuinely interested in what service users tell them and do not treat their knowledge with the same respect they give to professional knowledge.

•The culture of social care organizations. Service users generally feel that these organizations are not open to service user knowledge. They are reluctant and slow to change.

•Resource issues. Limited resources restrict service user's capacity to develop and share their knowledge. Also, if their views are not consistent with what services want to hear, their funding may be put at risk. This is seen as an increasing problem.

Making user involvement efficient and meaningfull. To be

person-centred you need to ask the individuals concerned…based on individual need Involvement expert.

The experiences of user involvement in social work education programmes elaborated in this article, point out that despite the existing barriers, service users show a high degree of responsibility and commitment to the courses and students. They are positive about participating as equal partners in all aspects of the design and delivery of social work education. They also have clear ideas about what universities, government and service user organisations could do to increase the effectiveness of involvement, backing them up with specific, practical suggestions. Macedonia as a country facing a challenge of upgrading user involvement in social work education should also gain insight into such available programme evaluation results. In this process, questions to be raised and considered to provide for higher participation rate and effectiveness are:

What universities could do?

1.Address issues of equality.

2.Address issues of access, in its widest definition.

3.Develop stronger links with their local community.

4.Employ more service users on their staff.

5.Enroll more service user students.

6.Train staff and service users.

What government could do?

1. Allocate secure funding to service user organizations.

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2.Review welfare benefits in relation to service user involvement.

3.Enforce positive representation of service users in the media.

4.Promote social work and social workers in a more positive light. What service user organizations could do?

1.Network more widely with other service user organizations and

publicize themselve's better.

2.Develop their own training, support and mentoring for service user trainers.

3.Coordinate service user involvement and training in social work education through a national user-controlled organization.

What could be done at national level?

1.A national network of service user organizations in social work education should be developed:

•The network would establish for the first time a national forum for service users in social work education. It would give service users a stronger voice in national and local developments.

•The network would provide opportunities to share experiences and develop the participation agenda. Members would be a resource for each other and for everyone else in the field.

2.The national grouping should give priority to engaging more diverse groups of service users and carers in qualifying training, which is of particular importance for a multiethnic country like Macedonia. This includes people from different ethnic groups and smaller service user groups that are not widely and routinely included. Stronger organisations would then act as a resource for smaller, less experienced groups.

3.National user-controlled organizations should develop this initiative. They should take the lead in building their sectors capacity to train social workers. They need direct funding for this purpose. In Macedonia, the financial sustainability should be addressed as a priority, as most of the non-governmental organisations are heavily dependent on project-related financial support predominantly provided by foreign foundations. This funding should be separate from the funding that universities also need to sustain participation and meet the degree requirements. Currently, no financial resources at university level are set aside for user involvement purposes. A national steering committee with strong local inputs could also be set up to develop the arrangements and work programme. The processes must be values-based, transparent and ensure accountability.

4.More training and support for service user trainers should be

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developed with service user organizations.

5. Government should address the benefits issues relating to public participation.

The importance of networking for effective user involvement is largely elaborated within the existing literature. Evaluation results of the existing programmes in Aglo-Saxon countries repeatedly emphasize that most service users thought that networking was a key route to strengthening service user knowledge and increasing its credibility and visibility, both in services and policy and among service users and service user organizations. Service users see a properly resourced national database of service user organizations owned and controlled by service users as helpful here. This aspect is of particular importance for Macedonia as service users and carers are weakly organized, with the exception of disabled user's organizations. Development of a national user network which offers support, information exchange, improved communication, contacts, advice on good practice and a national voice would certainly have an important contribution to advancing the situation in this domain. Finally, in all the capacity-building activities, countries like Macedonia must keep a sharp focus on the main purpose of involving service users and carers. This is to ensure that the new generation of social workers understands the outcomes from social care that people want and the standards of practice they expect, and that social workers are skilled and confident in working with service users and carers towards achieving them.

Instead of conclusion – present state recap and ways forward for Macedonia. Service user involvement in social work education in

Macedonia is only recently introduced concept within the academic discussions, yet to gain wider and more substantial acceptance in practice. In a narrow form it is present within the teaching and learning component of social work education. Still, even then, the involvement of service users is not a result of organised or strategic institutional efforts, but rather of individual teacher's initiatives. The fact that service user involvement is neighter required as obligatory, nor it is regulated within the relevant educational legislation, contributes to this present situation.

Herein, it should be emphasised that, having in mind the Macedonian context, any attempt to promote the concept without the elements of its compulsory application, legislative regulation and secured funding, would be probably beforehand doomed to failure. The final outcome would again be the sporadic and isolated user involvement cases that are insuficient to ensure wider acceptance and acknowledgement of the

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importance and usefulness of users and carer's involvement in social work education.

Involving service users and carers in social work education in a country like Macedonia is an ambitious agenda in which the type of knowledge that service users and carers can impart must be identified as a strong lever for improving both social care and education. Herein, it should be recognised that the benefits of involvement are two-fold. On one hand, it would help service users and carers to achieve more control, choice and better quality in their everyday lives, and in existing services, and on the other, it would contribute to achieving higher quality education. In the latter case, the purpose of the agenda is also to ensure that newly qualified social workers have a thorough understanding of the standards of practice, processes and outcomes that service users and carers want. Thus, from the very start of their professional career, they would treat service users and carers as active participants in service delivery, rather than as passive recipients. From this point of view, a radical transformation of the Macedonian education system that currently values more the theoretical knowledge rather than the practical, is required.

Last, but not least, it becomes increasingly clear that successful networking and the development, sharing and mainstreaming of service user knowledge are closely interrelated and that the two are inextricably involved with meaningful user involvement. For this to have a more powerful contribution, first, strengthening service user networking at individual and organisational levels is required and, second, simultaneous promotion of ef ective user involvement by service users and educational institutions. In this respect also, it seems that the conditions in Macedonia are not suficiently matured. Most categories of users and carers are still poorly organised (with the exception of disabled users) and thus their power to execute influence is still very weak. Conversely, high education institutions are still closed and reluctant to using, valuing and relying on outside expertise for teaching and student learning purposes, so it seems that this would probably be the first but the toughest wall to be broken down.

In the overall process of development of service user involvement in social work education in Macedonia, the experiences of the developed countries, as the Anglo-Saxon ones elaborated in this text, should be utilised, but only after careful analysis and adjustment of the modalities of involvement to the Macedonian educational milieu, instead of simple replication

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