Social work - Practice Learning Support Grant: equality impact assessment
Equality impact assessment relating to the introduction of the Practice Learning Support Grant for eligible social work students with practice learning placements in-year. It assesses the impact of the proposed grant for groups with protected characteristics.
Background
Scottish Government continues to provide financial support for social work students’ practice learning placement expenses. This is included within a wider package of improvements to the funding model for social work students[2].
A new grant was proposed to replace the previously available Interim Travel Grant 2023–2024. The administration and timely monitoring of the Interim Travel Grant, by the Office of the Chief Social Work Adviser (OCSWA), was challenging due to the different disbursement arrangements in each university. Challenges, within the context of long-term suboptimal design and delivery of practice learning for social work students in Scotland, includes unsustainable processes for placement allocation and a variety of different university processes and systems of financial disbursement.
In-depth engagement with universities also revealed inconsistency in payment of the Interim Travel Grant 2023–2024 to students across institutions.
Contact
Email: OCSWA@gov.scot
There is a problem
Thanks for your feedback