Bearing Witness: The Impact of Lived Experience Educators Participating in Social Work Student Supervision during Placement

Social work student supervision during field education is a mandated requirement where students review their activities and learning in the workplace with field educators (FEs). Inevitably service users will be discussed in supervision but will have little or no opportunity to represent their perspectives during sessions. In order to explore how service user perspectives might be integrated into supervision, this qualitative study examined the participation of two Lived Experience Educators in supervision sessions between six social work students and their FEs during final placement. Despite some initial trepidation, participants reported a significant and overwhelmingly positive impact based on more equalised power differentials, greater depth of reflection and the emergence of new ideas on increasing accountability to service users. These results have implications for the practice of supervision, with both students and staff, and for how people with lived experience expertise may contribute to improving service culture for the intended beneficiaries of social work services. Supervision of social work students during placement is an educational requirement but what occurs during supervision is not well understood. Service users are impacted by decisions made during supervision and might have an interest in educational outcomes for social work students, yet they are not part of the process. Lived Experience Educators participated in supervision sessions with students and field educators (FEs). Most students and FEs experienced trepidation when anticipating the Lived Experienced Educator's participation. The impact included increased reflectiveness, adjustments to the way power operated in supervision and increased accountability to service users.