Looking Through the Lens at Endings:Service User, Student, Carer and Practice Educator Perspectives on Endings within Social Work Training

This chapter will look at the importance of endings within social work professional training, with a focus on the student experience when on placement, as these endings often occur organically as student placements last between 85 and 100 days (Northern Ireland Social Care Council 2009).We learn best through experiential learning (Kolb 1984) so we have included narratives that highlight the very real importance of endings; this will be underpinned with relevant research. There is limited literature available in relation to endings in social work supervision (Gould 1977; Ruch, Turney and Ward 2010; Wall 1994) yet as a practice educator the exploration of endings is central to modelling good social work practice.