The PPP core structure: Five essential components

The following five components are the structure on which the PPP is based. They are necessary to ensure a well-rounded, effective educational program to foster student leadership skills in geriatrics.

These essential components are:

• University-Community Partnerships
• Field Rotations
• Competency Based Education
• Expanded Field Instructor Role
• Student Recruitment

The university-community partnership, which designs the practicum experiences and oversees the entire program’s implementation and development, is the heart of the program. Each of the five essential components has both a critical individual function and a direct relationship to the others. Taken together, the five components provide an integrated, coordinated, and comprehensive program designed to attract students to geriatric social work practice and to educate them for practice with passion and competence.

While the five essential components are essential to effectively educating students to become competent in aging, it is possible to add or create additional components as you tailor the PPP to your setting. For example, certain demonstration sites had special features that they felt were important to incorporate into their program, because of a commitment to a special population or type of service, or because of a perceived omission in their overall MSW program. The following outlines some examples of additional components from the demonstration programs:

• Program A emphasized educating students for public service; the program only operated in county departments of aging and was built on the MSW program’s commitment to public service.
• Program B offered a faculty member a small stipend for a summer internship in agencies of their choice; the purpose was to update faculty on current geriatric practice and encourage them to integrate that knowledge into the courses they teach.
• Several programs did something to facilitate graduates finding employment in aging, such as circulating job announcements, setting up a job bank, offering consultation on finding jobs.
• Several programs asked their alumni to participate in advisory capacities or as field instructors.
• Almost all programs engaged in activities to infuse the curriculum with aging content, including developing teaching materials, offering guest speakers from the practice arena, surveying faculty.