What does the role of advocacy and support look like for Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) who are working alongside neurodiverse children in Aotearoa New Zealand?
Research Summary:
This research aims to gather data from three social workers who have experience working with neurodivergence in their practice. This is to get first-hand accounts of social work practice with neurodivergent children and what factors come into play that informs relationship building, application of interventions, assessing strengths and needs, working in partnership with other agencies and linking to community resources. This research hopes to contribute to the minimal data currently available and highlight any identified challenges and successes for neurodivergent children in school, from a SWiS lens.
Participation Criteria:
I am inviting three participants for this study who are current Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) with at least two years of experience working in this role.
Introduction:
Kia ora, my name is Courtney Johansson, and I am a Masters of Applied Social Work student at Massey University. As part of my degree requirements, I am seeking participants for my research project on the experiences of Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) working with children who are neurodivergent and their whānau.
Purpose of the study:
This research aims to gather data from three social workers who have experience working with neurodivergence in their practice. This is to get first-hand accounts of social work practice with neurodivergent children and what factors come into play that informs relationship building, application of interventions, assessing strengths and needs, working in partnership with other agencies and linking to community resources.
This research hopes to contribute to the minimal data currently available and highlight any identified challenges and successes for neurodivergent children in school, from a SWiS lens. As this research will be small in scale, my hopes are that it may influence future social work research and practice considerations for other SWiS practitioners in this field.
Invitation to the study
I am writing to invite three participants for this study who are current Social Workers in Schools (SWiS) with at least two years of experience. A 60-minute semi-structured interview will take place over Zoom to allow participants from anywhere in Aotearoa New Zealand to take part as well as flexibility in interview time.
The interviews will be video recorded and subsequently transcribed with participants receiving a copy of their transcriptions to make amendments if required. A consent form will be supplied to sign before the interview takes place. Consent can be withdrawn up until the signed interview transcripts have been returned to me which authorises the use of them in the written research report.
Participants' data will be stored in a secure and confidential manner. The information collected will be anonymised and assigned unique identifiers to ensure individual, school and agency identities are kept confidential. The collected data will be retained for the duration of the research project and will be securely destroyed after the designated period.
Participant’s Rights
You are under no obligation to accept this invitation. If you decide to participate, you have the right to:
- Decline to answer any particular question.
- Withdraw from the study up until you have signed and authorised your transcript to be used.
- Ask any questions about the study at any time during participation.
- Provide information on the understanding that your identifying details as well as the identity of
your schools or agency will not be used unless you give permission to the researcher.
- Be given access to a summary of the project findings when it is concluded; and,
- Ask for the recorder to be turned off at any time during the interview.
Project Contacts
If you are interested in taking part in this research or have any questions, please contact me on;
21009785@massey.ac.nz
If you have any concerns regarding this research you can contact my supervisor;
Polu Samuelu f.samuelu@massey.ac.nz
Thank you for your time and consideration.
Kind regards,
Courtney Johansson
Student researcher, Massey University.
This project has been evaluated by peer review and judged to be low risk. Consequently, it has not been reviewed by one of the University’s Human Ethics Committees. The researcher(s) named above are responsible for the ethical conduct of this research.
If you have any concerns about the conduct of this research that you wish to raise with someone other than the researcher(s), please contact Prof Craig Johnson, Director, Research Ethics, telephone 06 356 9099 x 85271, email humanethics@massey.ac.nz
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