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While there is a well-established literature on psychoanalytically-informed baby and young child observation in social work education, little has been published recently. This paper reviews the rationale for its use, evaluating its impact on students' learning in the light of contemporary policy and practice contexts facing social work education. Analysis of feedback gained from a recent cohort, identifies three ways in which learning through baby and young child observation contributes: firstly, students encounter and learn about the complexity of child development from the direct experience of observing and secondly, observing facilitates the development of important skills for practice; students' 'use of self'.Thirdly, through observing, students describe how they develop the capacity to take-up and sustain a professional role. Well-structured teaching and learning through observation is therefore shown to provide a rigorous, theoretically-grounded contribution to the training of university-based social work students entering this complex and challenging professional field.

In this article a mental health trainer and a group facilitator explore the background to developing a new protocol to manage the re-approval of mental health social workers in an inner London borough. The new procedure involved social workers attending a series of small group sessions in which they were invited to present and reflect on their work with clients. The dynamics of these sessions and particularly some of the transferential material between group members and facilitator are explored here. The significance for mental health social work, post-qualifying learning and the possibilities of reflective practice is considered.

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