Personal issues that are impacting on placement

I noticed that my student Angie was struggling to get to work on time often had no lunch to eat and was always very tired. She didn’t seem to have much energy for placement and wasn’t really interested in the projects that I had assigned her. Everything just seemed to be a bit of an effort and turning up was about all she could manage. I knew she had a job that she had to work at night and I had heard from other staff that she had a child with special needs. While I was concerned about her wellbeing and her performance, I didn’t want to pry into her personal life. I figured that I would talk about it with her if she raised it in supervision, but otherwise I would not bring it up.

Key Considerations:

  • Angie’s emotional and physical wellbeing
  • Angie’s capacity to complete her placement successfully and meet all of her learning goals
  • My role and response to Angie’s behaviour as her supervisor

What went well:

  • Angie is still managing to turn up to placement
  • Angie has been able to confide in some staff members about her situation
  • I was concerned about Angie and was aware that ‘something’ was going on outside of placement so had been considerate of her performance

What didn’t go so well:

  • Angie hasn’t felt able to talk about her personal issues and how they might be impacting on her capacity to complete placement with either the Uni or me as her supervisor
  • Angie’s performance is not likely to result in her passing the placement
  • I felt that checking in with Angie about her performance will come across as though I was ‘prying’ into her personal life so therefore wasn’t addressing the issues, setting Angie up to potentially fail her placement.

What you would do differently next time:

  • As soon as I noticed that there seemed to be a pattern of behaviour with Angie (turning up late, not eating lunch, tired etc) I should have spoken with her immediately to attempt to work out why this is happening and what can be done to resolve the issues.
  • I could have done this without ‘prying’ into her personal life by not asking Angie for specific information but feeding back my observations of what I had noticed happing and asking Angie if there was any support that I could provide that would assist her in improving her performance e.g. would a later start time be helpful? Perhaps Angie should consider doing less hours over a longer period of time?
  • Angie and I could have agreed to ‘trial’ some of the strategies, checking in daily/weekly with how Angie was coping and if there was anything else that could be helpful or further supportive of Angie’s situation. A discussion could also be had about how we would know if the strategies were not working and when it would be a good idea to involve the uni.