We know it has been a while since we posted here, however we have been busy at work supporting the students in their learning and meeting people from all over the world to talk about service user involvement and social work education.

One memorable experience was meeting with University of Calgary social work students in person and online. We wrote two case studies and the students were asked to reflect on the ethical dilemma’s each case study presented and then ask the service user involved in the case study further information about their experience. The group had to come in at night in order to make up for the time difference but it was a great chance to be involved with students at another University.

In July 2020, two academic staff, Sara Hitchin and Dr. Sandra Engstrom (UNITY convenor) delivered an online presentation about UNITY for the IFSW Global Online Conference that had over 20,000 attendees in total from across the world. This was supposed to be done in person and with more direct involvement with the UNITY members, however due to Covid restrictions this was not fully possible and instead a video was created. We had some great interactions and feedback about the work that UNITY is doing with our students and are still getting emails wanting to connect with social work academics looking to involve service users in their teaching.

Below is the presentation for you to watch:

We have a number of challenges moving forward with all of the teaching being moved to online platforms due to Covid restrictions however we are a passionate group and can’t wait to see how we can engage with the students online.