For universities and field education teams
A school placement your students are actually supported in.
STEP helps schools host placement students properly: defined scope, real supervision, clear escalation, and a placement that builds the future wellbeing workforce. This page is for placement coordinators and field education teams.
What a STEP-hosted placement looks like
Hosted, not just placed.
A placement only works when the day-to-day experience matches what the course needs the student to learn. STEP trains the school before the student arrives, so the placement is built around your course expectations rather than fitted in around them.
Defined scope for every task
Every task a student might touch is permissioned before the placement starts. Students never assess risk, hold a case alone or make safety decisions. The habit the school is trained in: if you are unsure, it is not a yes.
Named supervision roles
Each student is anchored by a STEP Lead and a Task Supervisor with clear responsibilities, a predictable supervision rhythm of 30 to 60 minutes a week, and structured debriefing. Supervision is planned, not heroic.
Escalation everyone knows
Escalation and duty-of-care pathways are agreed before they are needed, so when risk appears the student and the school both know exactly what happens next.
Matched to course expectations
Students do genuine preventative wellbeing work inside a school team, shaped to the placement hours, learning goals and assessment requirements of their course, with feedback and university reporting supported throughout.
Both sides of the placement
STEP speaks field education’s language from the inside.
STEP’s founder supervises placements from the university side as a field educator with Acknowledge Education, and has supervised 90 placement students across school hosting and university field education, in social work, counselling and other wellbeing and allied health disciplines.
That dual perspective is built into the model: placements that meet university learning requirements, inside schools that have been trained to host them well.
The workforce lens of a STEP review tests a school’s structures against the AASW Australian Social Work Education and Accreditation Standards, which is the same bar universities meet: Task Supervisor anchoring, supervision touchpoints and scope fidelity.
What partner schools bring
- Trained STEP Leads and Task Supervisors
- A written scope for the student’s work, permissioned task by task
- Structured supervision and debriefing time, protected in the calendar
- A single point of contact for the university
- An annual governance review that checks the model is still holding
STEP does not broker placements and does not guarantee student supply in either direction. It is the structure that makes hosting safe, ethical and valuable.
Talk to STEP
Placing students in schools, or want to?
If you place students in social work, counselling or other wellbeing and allied health disciplines, STEP would like to hear from you. Partner schools are trained to host well.
For a school reading this
If you already host placement students and want the structure around them to be stronger, that is what the Supervising Well workshop does, and a Wellbeing Capacity Review scores your workforce readiness as one of its ten domains.