Common questions and answers about placement

The department has agreements and/or collaborations with the following municipalities: Uppsala, Knivsta, Enköping, Heby, Tierp, Håbo, Älvkarleby and Östhammar. The department also collaborates with Region Uppsala as well as civil society organisations and private actors in the county.

You can apply for your own placement both within and outside Uppsala County, however, you may not apply for a place with the businesses that Uppsala University has collaborations/agreements with. You may also not apply for a place in activities with which other sociology programs in Sweden have agreements/collaborations. The best thing is to contact the placement coordinator if you are thinking of applying for your own placement. Given that the business where you want to do your placement does not have an agreement/collaboration with a Swedish university, you contact the business yourself. If you get a positive answer, you hand over contact details to a supervisor/coordinator to the placement coordinator (vfu-soc@uu.se). The Placement coordinator needs information as soon as possible but no later than April 15, semester 4 if you have found your own placement place. We then manage the contact in the same way as with other placement locations. Our requirements are that you must be supervised by a social worker and that you must be able to be at the placement site for 20 weeks, if you plan to do the placement in a county where there is already a social work programme at a university, any placement will be done in consultation with the university. In some cases, Uppsala University can offer Placement outside Uppsala County in consultation with other universities and colleges. You can also state in the request form that you wish to do placement in another location.

Yes, you can, we recommend placement within the so-called program countries within Erasmus+. The program countries are all EU countries + Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway, North Macedonia, Serbia and Turkey. As a placement student in one of these countries, you must apply for an Erasmus scholarship for traineeship via the Department for Internationalization. All students doing Erasmus internships are covered by the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency's Student UT insurance. If you are going to do placement in the EU, you must also order the European health insurance card so that you have the right to healthcare on the same terms as the country's own residents. If you plan to do your placement outside the Erasmus countries, you yourself need to bear the costs associated.

Students arrange their own placement abroad but contact the placement coordinator well in advance for planning (preferably already during the third semester).

Important things to consider when applying for a VFU placement abroad:

• The same requirements for foreign VFU apply. See the study plan for course objectives and content.
• The placement must be free of charge for you as a student.
• You are expected to be in the business an average of 34 hours/week - 4 hours/week are devoted to self-study.
• The supervisor must be able to speak English fluently.
• You yourself need to master the country's language in order to manage contact with clients.
• Your supervisor must be a trained social worker or equivalent (abroad it can be called a trained Social Worker/has a degree in Social Work). The supervisor must be able to set aside 1h/week for qualitative supervision as well as time for ongoing supervision.
• The organization must be prepared to receive you throughout the semester, i.e. 20 weeks.
• It is important to remember that it is about business-based education, placement, it is not an internship or volunteer work.

When you have made contact with an organization that is prepared to receive you, you need to submit the following information to the placement coordinator:

1. Description of the organization – what type of organization is it and what type of Social Work does it do? Feel free to include links to the organization's website etc.
2. Description of the tasks you would perform.
3. Contact details for supervisor or operations manager.

The placement coordinator then contacts the organization in question and ensures that they meet the requirements for placement. The placement coordinator will then contact you to let you know if placement at the organization is approved or not.

Yes, if you have previously worked, it may be possible to transfer credit within the placement course. Follow this link to see the requirements for transferring credit. If your work experience meets the requirements for credit, you make an application for credit transfer. When you have chosen that your application concerns the credit transfer of an entire course within the social work program, the mandatory questions appear: Which course is the basis for the credit transfer? and at which university did you study the course? On the first question you can enter relevant work experience and the job title (e.g. social secretary) you had and on the second question you can write the name of the employer(s). If you have had external supervision via e.g. occupational health care and you have difficulty getting this certified via the occupational health in question, ask the responsible manager if he can certify the type of supervision employees receive at the workplace, remember to also include supervision or the equivalent that you as a new employee received when you were introduced to work (in some workplaces, for example, a mentor is appointed who acts as a kind of supervisor for the new employee).

Note that the application for crediting of placement must be received by the institution by the 4th semester at the latest.

Notification of requests for placement is made during the 4th semester, no later than April 15. Some placement places may be advertised to students (in Studium) during February, the deadline for applications for these possible places is 28th of February. For an application to be considered complete, a personal letter and CV must have been received by vfu-soc@uu.se no later than 28th of February. Selection and possible interviews are then carried out by the placement site (during March). All applicants will be notified by 1th of April at the latest. Students who applied but did not receive placement via advertising must fill in a request form and Uppsala University will arrange a placement for the student.

Students who have not submitted the application in time will be offered placement subject to availability and after all students who submitted the application in time have been offered a place. Requests from late registrations will not be considered.

During semester 4, you can fill in a notification for requests for a placement within Uppsala County. Students are asked to fill in up to five areas of activity in which they are interested in doing their placement. In the placement work, the placement coordinator will, if possible, take students' wishes into account, however there are no guarantees that you will get a place according to your wishes. Students are also asked to submit a short motivation and to answer some other questions in addition to their wishes as support in finding a suitable placement. Students have the opportunity during the term to drop in to the placement coordinator before the application is sent in. The request form must be sent in by April 15 at the latest.

Yes, at some businesses the placement time is divided so that you do ten weeks at one place and ten weeks at another.

No, you will be allocated a place. The placement coordinator will fill out your wishes and other information that you filled out in the notification of wishes during the fourth semester in relation to which places are available in the semester you are going to do your placement. All students who are in phase with their studies and submit the request form on time will be allocated a placement, however there are no guarantees that you can get a placement based on your requests. In the request form, you can enter 3-5 areas of activity where you wish to be placed in a placement - the more areas you enter, the more likely you are to get a placement in one of the areas you desire - so preferably indicate five areas where you can imagine doing your investment.

During the course, it is mandatory to participate in the placement you have been assigned as a student. In addition to what is included in this placement, it also includes tasks that connect the practical experience to the theoretical knowledge base built up during previous semesters and you will have mandatory seminars. These written and oral tasks provide an in-depth connection between theory and practice. It also provides an increased understanding of how the theoretical aspects within the education should provide support in the field of social work after completion of the education. You also have personal and professional development in parallel during the entire placement semester.

No, you are expected to be in the business an average of 34 hours/week and it is the nature of the business and/or when your supervisors are on site that governs your working hours. This means that within certain placements, practice on evenings and/or weekends may be included. You can also be placed in a business outside the Uppsala conurbation that requires commuting. The activities must take into account the university-led parts, such as the mandatory seminars and personal and professional development that take place in parallel with the placement. It is therefore important that you, as a student, clearly inform your supervisor(s) when you are expected to participate in compulsory university-based parts. Placement, preparation for and participation in the university-led seminars and personal and professional development are estimated to take a total of 40h/week. When placing, the placement coordinator takes into account as far as possible students with approved special reasons for placement and these are placed in suitable activities.

Yes, if you are placed on a placement in one of Uppsala's nearby municipalities, you will receive travel compensation. The placement coordinator will give you more information about this if it becomes relevant for you. You will not receive travel compensation if you yourself choose to do your placement semester in another location outside Uppsala County and/or abroad.

If you have stated in the request form that you have children in preschool/school up to first grade and are in need of childcare, we try to accommodate this as far as possible.

The reasons the social work education takes into account when placing are:

• Social reasons - childcare i.e., need to pick up and drop off children in pre-school activities and school childcare up to and including first grade.
• Medical reasons – for example, the need for own healthcare in Uppsala or another agreement municipality or other medical reasons that apply to the student. Or educational adaptation due to permanent disability.
• Other special circumstances - e.g., care of children (applies to guardians), assignment as a student representative in one of UU's committees.

Any special reasons must be stated in the request form and you yourself are responsible for submitting the relevant certificates. Those who are student representatives in one of UU's committees and/or who have children in need of childcare up to first grade (birth certificate) uploads the relevant certificate directly in the request form. If a student has any of the other strong reasons for placement, nothing should be uploaded in the request form, however, the placement coordinator may contact the student for more information about their strong reasons for placement. Information about strong reasons for placement is never passed on to the placement site, on the other hand, it forms a basis for the placement coordinator when placement is made.

As adaptation needs are often different for each case, you contact one of the study advisors to discuss your needs for adaptation in relation to the placement period.