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Social Work vocabulary · Children, Families and Care

Placement

Meaning in social work, with examples

/ˈpleɪsmənt/nounCore term

In social work, placement means: The home or setting where a child in care or an adult needing care is placed to live; also a period of supervised practice for social work students.

In Turkish: yerleştirme, bakım yeri, staj

How it is used

In care work you find, make, review or end a placement; a placement breaks down when it ends in an unplanned way, and placement stability is a key goal. In education students do a placement (US: field placement or practicum).

Example sentences

  1. We are looking for a placement where the three siblings can stay together.

  2. My final-year placement was in a hospital social work team.

Common collocations

  • placement breakdown
  • placement stability
  • foster placement
  • student placement
  • emergency placement
  • foster careA form of care in which a child who cannot live with their own parents lives, for a short or long time, with another approved family.
  • residential careCare in which people live in a staffed setting, such as a children's home or a care home for older or disabled adults, rather than in a family home.
  • looked-after childA child who is cared for by a local authority, for example in foster care or a children's home, either under a court order or with the parents' agreement.
  • kinship careCare of a child by grandparents, aunts, uncles, older siblings or close family friends when the parents cannot look after them.

More terms: Children, Families and Care

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