Student Placements

Depaul Ireland has a number of placement opportunities across all of our services which generally follow the academic calendar for third level students and align to our general recruitment rounds for volunteers.

For their placement, students are offered the opportunity to become a voluntary member of the Depaul Ireland team at a particular project. The commitment for this role is generally 1 or 2 days a week for at least 12 weeks in duration, or a fulltime role in the case of block placements. In the past, our services have favoured placements of a longer duration as this allows students to be fully inducted and trained before settling into the role. It also aids their learning as it allows them to build a professional relationship with the staff and volunteer teams, as well as with service users.

Before applying for a student placement with Depaul Ireland, please read though the following guidelines and accompanying documents.

STUDENT PLACEMENT GUIDELINES

Students must be 18 years old and above.
Placement can be Practical or Research based.
Depaul Ireland favours practical based placements where the duration should not be shorter than 12 weeks due to necessary time for induction and familiarsation with project and service users.
All coursework related to the placement must be approved by placement participant's line manager in Depaul Ireland for confidentiality.
College dates and meetings that occur with the placement times should be communicated early by the student and the line manager should as far as possible facilitate around these.
The students, whilst on placement, should not undertake work that project workers should be undertaking and should not be put into rota to do core shift work for that project.
Placement objectives should be added value and should not serve as a job/role substitute in a Depaul Ireland service.
In order to facilitate quality placements, Depaul Ireland has a quota for the number of placements feasible to undertake in one particular project and across organisations per year.

Potential Fields of Study

Social Studies/Social Work/Social Care
Addiction, harm reduction, service user involvement
Pastoral leadership
Occupational Therapy
Nutrition/Fitness
Researchers/Report Writers
Alternative project work from any field if agreed to be appropriate and project submission provided in advance. The emphasis should be on mutual benefit, i.e. how the project can benefit Depaul Ireland & its service users as well as the learning objectives of the placement.

Hear from our past student placements

Donna did a student placement for 12 weeks in Sundial House in 2011 to fulfuil requirements on her course in Social Care at Dundalk IT. Here she shares her experience with us.

On my course in Social Care in Dundalk Institute of Technology I had to spend twelve weeks working with staff and residents to gain experience of putting theory into practice. I had no experience of homelessness or addiction and was uncertain what to expect. In hindsight this helped me to no expectations and made each day unique, exciting and a great learnging curve. Donna

I entered Sundial House as a social care student, and can confidently say that I left there, a social care student. The great supervision sessions I received helped me to work through any difficulties I faced. I cannot stress enough how good this placement was for me.

If there is anyone seeking work placement at the moment and are not sure if they are up to the challenge, this place offers great supervision sessions that help you to work through any difficulties you may be having. I cannot stress enough how good this placement was for me. Outside formal supervision sessions the project workers were always willing to help when they could. I found it easy to meet my course requirements and had a great experience in the process.

When I was there we went on bowling trips and organised games and activities. I had lots of laughs with residents and staff alike. I was welcomed into the organisation with open arms by all.

This placement will always stay with me as the defining point in my career, because we spend all this time in college learning what to do during various incidents. The real learning for me was on placement through my actions and through observing others.

One of the abiding memories I will keep is the resilience of the service users I met in Sundial House. No matter how tough life becomes for them their fighting spirit pulls them through and helps them to cope with almost anything life deals them.

For more stories from past student placements see our Volunteer Blog.

Past Student Placements Studied at...

Northern Ireland

Queens University Belfast

Republic of Ireland

All Hallows College
Trinity College
University of Sligo
Liberties College
Inchicore College

International

Leonardo da Vinci
Kaplan Aspect
Boston College

Documents for Prospective Student Placements

Download pdf of Depaul Ireland Student Placement Policy.

Download pdf of Letter to Potential Student Placements

Download pdf of Student Placement Application Form

The volunteer coordinators will be your contact point for this stage of application. Please contact Jenny Groves (NI) or Orla McAndrew (ROI) or visit Contact Us page for details if you would like to talk to them prior to completing the application.