Audio resources

Northern Ireland Critical Dialogues 2008

The first of two Critical Dialogues addressed the question `To what extent is it the role of the academic community to affect change at policy and practice level (locally and nationally)? The event took the form of a round table discussion based on papers from Paul Martin, Chief Social Service Officer, Social Services Inspectorate DHSSPS on the situation of social work in Northern Ireland, Ann Davis, Professor of Social Work, Director of CEIMH (Centre for Excellence in Mental Health), at the University of Birmingham on the situation in England and Dr. Eion O`Sullivan, Trinity College Dublin Fellow, School of Social Work and Social Policy, Trinity College Dublin on the Policy perspective from Ireland. The discussion was chaired by Dr. Caroline Skehill, Senior Lecturer, Queens University Belfast and Deirdre Heenan, Professor in Social Policy, University of Ulster.

The following audio extracts from the event are available in MP3 format:

• Audio extract one: Paul Martin, 'what do social workers do?' (5.16 MB)
• Audio extract two: Paul Martin,'the role of social work academics in the change agenda' (3.7MB)
• Audio extract three: Ann Davis, 'promoting and advocating for the discipline'(3. 41 MB)
• Audio extract four: Ann Davis, 'issues for the academic social work community and top tips for working with change' (7.8 MB)

A second critical dialogue addressing the question 'How might practitioners be agents of change?' took place on 10 April 2008. The following audio extracts from the event are available in MP3 format:

• Audio extract: Mark Baldwin 'Definitions of Social Work' (1.14 MB)

Joint Social Work Education Conference 2007

Audio extracts from the JSWEC 2007 keynote presentations are available in MP3 format. The links below will take you to the download page on the JSWEC 2007 site.

• Mark Drakeford - Social work in the living laboratory
• Jan Fook - Certainty in Uncertainty? What are our responsibilities?
• Michael Ungar - Nurturing resilience across cultures and contexts: A discussion of how research informs practice

People's Lives - Experiencing social policy

Video and audio clips from a video produced in 1999 to support discussions with A-level, B-Tech and Access course students deciding on higher education courses of study. The video was sponsored by the Social Policy Association (SPA) and Joint University Council Social Policy Committee. Feedback on the video by a small group of young people and academics highlighted the difficulties of keeping promotional materials up to date and topical, but it is felt that the clips chosen have continuing currency. The clips have been edited and published with permission of the SPA Executive. To view the video clips, please see the moving images page.

• Student 1 talking about social policy course (MP3 audio, 572KB)
• Student 2 talking about social policy course (MP3 audio, 1.9MB)
• Group talking about studying social policy (MP3 audio, 2.06MB)