As part of the curriculum development and collaboration between the partnerships, there are plans in place to run a joint conference in March 2014 in Northern Ireland.
NRC has a Memorandum of Understanding in place with KSU and two NRC students have already benefited from its strategic partnership through a successful eight week internship.
Two NRC Counselling Lecturers, Roisin Horner and Liz Carey, have just returned from an exciting and rewarding visit to KSU, on a best practice exchange, which was funded through the Connected project. The aim of the visit was to exchange information on respective academic programmes, explore opportunities for future collaboration and distance learning, discussions on work placements and knowledge transfer and acquisition.
Kansas State University is recognised as a leading provider of training in Trauma and Family Services and offers a broad curriculum of graduate, masters and doctoral programmes in these and related areas. The University has also carried out valuable research, on the benefits of structured family life.
The visit provided the lecturers with the opportunity to meet Professor Sandy Smith, a domestic violence expert at the University and exchange experiences on the areas of quality of provision and how this can be developed into evidence based material. They also toured the Family Centre of Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas where evidence of good practice was shared and the new emerging area of Financial Counselling provision, was discussed.
Further collaborative projects including student exchanges, developments in a new Trauma non- accredited short programme for NRC, shared research from KSU PhD students, were also explored.
Rosin Horner, NRC Curriculum Manger for Social Care and Early Years commenting on the visit said “This Connected project is facilitating and linking many of the benefits of Health, Vitality, Safe and Secure strands of the programme. NRC has hosted a series of successful conferences where a wide range of Health, Social Care and Counselling Agencies from all over Ireland have been in attendance.”
Roisin added that “This visit to KSU provided us with a better perspective in the field of Trauma and the physical well-being of individuals, communities and society, in general and outside of Northern Ireland. Through this engagement with KSU and exchange of best practice, we can now work towards developing the expansion of the NRC curriculum and its services.”
Information on the forthcoming Connected joint conference will be available from NRC in the New Year.
