Summary
Skills workshops are provided to the PG Certificate in Mental Health Social Work Students by academic staff alongside mental health practitioners. The modules for the programme are structured to provide theoretical and law input including an exploration of the role of the MHO and their duties and responsibilities within the law. The skills workshops enable the students to practice the skills they are aiming to use in practice in their role as an MHO. This includes practical completion of applications for detention under the Act, Mentally Disordered Offender reports, compilation of Social Circumstances Reports using the good practice guidelines developed by the Mental Welfare Commission and a number of role play activities including a mental health tribunal hearing.Context
School of Social Work & Social Policy
Faculty of Humanities & Social Sciences
Contact Details
Ailsa Stewart
http://www.strath.ac.uk/staff/stewartailsams/
Themes
Themes
Rationale
Following feedback from previous cohorts of students about the challenges of obtaining learning opportunities focused on a range of practical skills. The course team developed the skills workshops to ensure consistency of availability of opportunity. Alongside this, the opportunity to undertake live applications and report compilation based on real cases was felt to benefit students prior to their practice experience.
Successes
Feedback from students on the skills workshops has been excellent. They continually score well on the module evaluations and are often cited as one of the three most positive aspects of the programme alongside the variety of input from across the professions involved in mental health and the use of role plays to illustrate process using relevant professionals.
Challenges
The main obstacle encountered is in encouraging MHOs currently in practice to participate in the skills workshop. This is not due to a lack of willingness rather lack of time due to the demands of the job. The preparation provided by the practice learning co-ordinator to the MHOs is also significant and having to do this every year with a new group is time consuming. However, the course team remain committed to this model due to the clear benefit to students.