Introduction

Service-user involvement in social work education has gained widespread attention in various countries in Europe and worldwide (Chiapparini, 2016). Although the term ‘service-user involvement’ suggests a common approach, it encompasses a number of different approaches with varying aims and scope. One important distinction is the view of service-user involvement as taking place either from an empowerment perspective or from an educational perspective (Laging and Heidenreich, 2019): from an empowerment perspective, the main aim of service-user involvement is to mobilise and empower service users by including them in as many domains as possible (for example, curriculum development, seminars or administration). From an educational perspective, the emphasis of service-user involvement in social work education is on the students’ perspective, especially on skills development. In this chapter, we will focus on the latter perspective.

Service-user involvement from an educational perspective

In the German context, social work as an academic discipline has developed relatively late (Kruse, 2004; Hamburger et al, 2015). Thus, academic knowledge plays a major role in the study courses. However, conducting social work is a complex task that requires skills from a variety of domains. The German ‘Qualification Framework for Social Work’ (QFSW, Qualifikationsrahmen Soziale Arbeit), edited by the Social Work Faculty Council, defines a number of these skills: besides more academic content, ‘professional general abilities’, ‘attitudes in social work’ and ‘personal characteristics and attitudes’ (see Bartosch et al, 2008) play a major role. The development of these skills could be impacted by service-user involvement: due to its experiential nature, it lends itself to the development of important interpersonal skills that are highly relevant for social work. On a more practical note, the most important experience for students might be to collaborate with service users on eye level (Askheim, 2012), that is, by working together with service users on a specific topic rather than lecturing them on knowledge they have gained in their studies. The specific knowledge that service users bring into the interchange (Utschakowski et al, 2016) can be distinguished from academic knowledge: experiential knowledge is more subjective, grounded in personal experience and ‘hands-on’, while academic knowledge is often of a more generalised (and less emotional) kind.