Social work education is preparing students for human work, which is rarely straight forward. Preparing students for the messiness of the work is challenging, especially in a field with so many rules and expectations. It might seem easier (safer) to fit families into the boxes provided.

Participants explained the importance of learning multiple perspectives, otherwise workers can get tunnel vision and only see one path. Participants who learned specific cultural approaches for example such as Family Group Conferencing which comes from the Maori people in New Zealand were then able to consider these alternative approaches to mainstream child welfare practices when in the field.

Participants highlighted the importance of cross-discipline learning as students, whether this is by joining courses or attending conferences, students should see a broader picture of child welfare, “beyond just child protection” (K1). These learning opportunities will help instill the value in engaging with other people involved in meeting servicer users needs.

Participants advised not sugar-coating child welfare in the classroom, it’s important to spend time in class going through the most complicated cases and considering what to do. This reduces experiencing things for the first time when you start in the child welfare field and you might feel less over-whelmed. When you find something that might be “shocking” you will know the situation is workable and feel prepared to engage. Participants talked about bringing in the role that media plays in child welfare and unpacking how that impacts workers and families involved in the system.

Participants suggested the benefit of hearing directly from people who have been working in the child welfare field about their experiences.

Engaging in the kind of deep self-reflection described earlier requires a certain level of vulnerability, whether you are exploring your own experiences of privilege and or oppression. Students need to feel safe to both share stories and listen to them. Creating safe spaces in the classroom can then be transferred to the field in the way students create safe spaces for the people they are working with to feel they can share, be heard, and understood. Having these experiences during their education will help prepare students to be more empathetic. Students may not even realise at the time the significance of their learning until they are in a situation in the field that requires them to draw on it.

A generalist social work degree is about personal growth and understanding who you are in relationship with others. This is foundational to all knowledge, values and skills learned. Since we are developing humans throughout our lives, this learning about how we relate to others and resolving issues should be ongoing. Most participants acknowledged that the scope of child welfare is so large that it’s impossible to cover everything even in a dedicated child welfare course. One educator advised she let’s students know, “this is just the tip of the iceberg” and that they have an ethical responsibility to continue learning.

Participants identified learning about personal wellness and self-care as an area for improvement in social work education. Participants explained this is often glossed over throughout the program and not given the serious attention it requires, especially in a challenging field like child welfare. Participants specifically mentioned self-care needing to more than just a bubble bath.

Participants explained that they are modeling self-care for service users and educators can do this for their students as well. Participants talked about needing experiences in education to expose their stressors so that students can prepare for self-care and know how they will cope.

Participants described a limitation in education is when you learn the importance of a concept but not the “how to”. One educator talked about building a self-care toolbox and begins each class with a mindfulness activity that students can take into their practice.

Participants talked about the reality of stress in child welfare, that it could cause you to avoid certain service users if the work is difficult, that you can become jaded and judgmental. One participant stated, dealing with systemic issues, like “banging head against the wall…I think a lot of workers feel like really bad about what we have to do sometimes, I’d say there’s a lot of workers who don’t agree with what they’re doing but you have to do it because it’s your mandate and it’s your job” (S2).

Not surprisingly, participants identified engagement and assessment skills as essential for building relationships and “getting to the root of an issue” in child welfare practice. One participant explained that it is less about how much you know and more about how skilled you are in gathering information. However, a common dilemma identified by participants was heavy workload demands which interferes with the time and energy required for authentic engagement.

Workers may feel frustrated that they are not using the theories and skills they learned during their degree. Participants explained that it would be helpful to learn the local child welfare assessment format and tools during their education, specifically regarding assessing risk. They also cautioned about having “grandiose ideas” as students writing assessments and the importance of being realistic. Workers need to be able to complete meaningful assessments that clearly connect interventions with goals and outcomes that are measurable. One participant admitted they often cut and paste the standard to do list for a caregiver in a case plan or court document. Another stated, “I think we operate in such a fast-paced system that, you know, we intervene, move on to the next one” (K7).

Participants working in protection roles acknowledged the importance of their interpersonal communication course, even the dreaded role-play exercises for helping develop their engagement skills, particularly for working in a mandated setting like child welfare.

Most participants with experience working in protection roles identified the importance of learning about child development and the impact of trauma for completing accurate assessments and case plans. Participants felt this was an area for improvement in education, especially how this relates to systemic barriers and social determinants of health.

Participants acknowledged that understanding how trauma impacts service user’s behavior can help explain a lot of what is happening, and workers might be less punitive in their response, “a lot of our clients have been traumatized somewhere … We’re not trying to punish people. People are acting the way they do because they’ve been traumatized” (K8).

Participants identified the importance of understanding how the child welfare system works within larger political and economic systems. This includes history and the way systems maintain inequality through systemic oppression. A participant working as a protection worker described learning about different ideologies in their policy course was transformative because they learned about different views of human nature, “how do we view society and how that then impacts people’s policy making” (S3).

Participants indicated limited opportunity to influence policy, however if students felt better equipped with skills for policy making and analysis this could change. Participants recognized that system level and policy changes are required to address the challenges in child welfare. One participant stated she had numerous peers who left child welfare,

"when I talked to them, it was because they felt that they weren’t practicing social work. They had been really sort of institutionalized into this model, this child protection model, and there was no wiggle room for them to make any change, so they felt powerless, so they ended up leaving". (K3)

Participants felt frontline workers should speak into policy because they see how policy impacts service. For learning, participants stated case studies are important tools for making connections to larger systems (families) and structures (policies). An educator explained case studies should be, “designed to cause students to have to have faced the kinds of decision-making a child welfare worker is going to have to face” (E7).

Participants identified cultural knowledge as necessary for social work practice in child welfare, in particular Indigenous knowledges. One participant identified the need to move beyond just understanding to making space for other cultures, “make sure that you’re respecting, and not just respecting but actually creating space for an Indigenous culture” (K6).

Participants described the importance of distinguishing Indigenous child welfare from mainstream as having its own history, ways of knowing, and ways of caring. Social work education has a responsibility to prepare and support Indigenous social workers who may have additional responsibilities to family, and community.

"Indigenous people, we take up a huge part of child welfare and our kids are being part of the system, you know and if you’re not learning any of it, you’re not going to help them, right? I talked to a colleague of mine last week and he said, you know we need to teach the students how to get their kids back. "(E1)

Teaching students “how to get their kids back” demonstrates the transformative potential of education to restore a wrong. The overinvolvement of the child welfare system with Indigenous families is a systemic social issue that the social work profession participates in and therefore has an ethical duty to respond to. Equipping students with the knowledge and skills to know how to make these changes is part of the responsibility of educators; educators “must answer the call” (E8). This goes beyond just learning how to work within the current system. Indigenous knowledges about child-caring and child welfare approaches have not been given enough weight in social work education and this is mirrored in the field.