The Future of Fieldwork in a Market Economy
The economic reforms of the past decade have had a dramatic impact on social services. The application of market forces to the welfare sector—including competition, contestability, contracting and diminishing funding of strictly defined policy objectives—has exerted an influence on social work education. This impact has been particularly sharply felt by those engaged in supervised field practice programmes in schools of social work. In this paper, the writers outline their experiences and undertake a process of analysis and reflection with the aim of creating a shift in thinking about fieldwork which encourages the development of new models for the achievement of fieldwork goals.
"There is competition": Facing the reality of field education in New Zealand
INTRODUCTION: Anecdotal evidence of increasing competition for field education placements has raised concerns about the availability of quality learning opportunities for students and so it was considered timely to examine stakeholder perspectives.METHOD: In late 2014, 15 tertiary educators from 11 tertiary institutions and 31 social work students from three Aotearoa New Zealand tertiary institutions engaged with the researcher in individual or focus group interviews on aspects of quality field education.FINDINGS: Overall, the tertiary educators revealed considerable pressure on them to secure quality student placements due to competition with other tertiary providers, limited placement opportunities in some locations, high workloads and inadequate funding. Students recognised these pressures but questioned whether the educators are adequately supported by the tertiary institution. Placement availability was also affected by organisations experiencing funding pressures, placement fatigue, limited space and physical resources, and high workloads.CONCLUSIONS: These qualitative findings raise questions for all the key stakeholders in field education: tertiary institutions, educators, social service organisations, the professional associations, the regulatory body and students. The findings from this study signal the need for a comprehensive, sector-wide examination of the social work field education context in Aotearoa New Zealand. 
Image of the Social Worker in the Community and in the Profession
The aim of the present work has been to analyze personal goals and subjective well-being of employees in state and private sectors. There was collected data about 122 adults, working in state or private sectors. In the research there were used Personal Goal Questionnaire (K.Salmela-Aro, J.E.Nurmi, 2000) and Satisfaction With Life Scale created in 1993 by Pavot and Diener (Diener, 2000). The results of the research show that personal goals of employees in state and private sectors differ. Employees in state sector are more oriented to health connected goals than employees in private sector. Also employees in state sector are more oriented to relatives connected goals than employees in private sector. Employees in private sector more often have to intimate relationship and family connected goals than employees in state sector do. Subjective well-being of employees in state and private sectors doesn’t differ. Characteristics of career related goal differ between employees in state and private sectors. Employees in private state have a higher commitment engagement to their career related goal and higher progresses in achievement attainment than employees in state sector have. Subjective well-being of employees in state sector is positively related to commitment engagement to their career related goal and positively related to progress in achievement attainment of this goal. Subjective well-being of employees in private sector is positively related only to commitment engagement to their career related goal.