Service Users/Carers

Service users and carers are essential to the education of health and social care students within the Faculty of Health. Staffordshire University User and Carer Involvement Team in the Community (SUUCIT& C) provides an umbrella for service user and carer involvement across the Faculty.
Service users and carers are involved in lots of ways. For example:

• Role play and teaching students
• Recruiting, selecting and interviewing students
• Attending Open Evenings and Open Days
• Developing and reviewing course materials
• Observing teaching sessions and offering feedback
• Attending meetings to offer views, opinions and experiences
• Curriculum and module designing and planning
• Evaluating courses and quality assurance
• Developing the curriculum and programme management
• Research

The Social Work Service Users and Carers Group have won a prestigious national award in May 2009 for the work they undertook last year in the social work skills lab at Staffordshire University. Supported by Professor Bernard Moss, the members of the group worked with the first year social work students on a one-to-one basis, to help them develop their telephone and interviewing skills. This involved developing role play scenarios, giving the students encouraging feedback, and then helping to assess them summatively at the end of the year. Student feedback was overwhelmingly appreciative: “it made such a difference to my confidence, and has really prepared me for my professional practice", is how one student described it. Wendy and John Sullivan, the group leaders, received the Community Care Excellence Network award on behalf of the group.