Two students from the Department of Social Care and Social Work will have the opportunity to collaborate with academic researchers from across disciplines and social workers from Manchester City Council’s New Arrivals team to explore the benefits and challenges of treescapes for supporting social work and social care with unaccompanied asylum-seeking children (UASC). This will include accompanying UASC, researchers, and social workers on research/arts visits to parks and forests across North West England. As part of a broader study of UASC understandings and experiences with/in UK treescapes, students will have the opportunity to co-design and contribute to a research project focused on capturing insights and outcomes related to social work and social care in treescape settings. This may include reviewing literature on the natural environment in social work, as well as conducting supervised fieldwork with social workers and UASC. This project provides the opportunity to develop skills in social work practice with UASC, meet and learn from social workers from the MCC New Arrivals team, explore the role of the environment is social work and social care, and undertake a piece of innovative, independent research. 

This internship will take place over approximately 3 months, with 2-3 full-day field visits (on weekends) and additional research work in-between sessions. 

Interns will be supervised by project leads Caitlin Nunn and Khawla Badwan, with support from Ffion Evans from the Department of Social Care and Social Work. We may additionally identify and employ a PGR mentor.