Leeds Metropolitan decided to collaborate with Toolwire in response to the Munro Review of Child Protection, published in 2011. This report found that child-protection efforts were often undermined by the lack of a coherent strategy and poor communication between local agencies - such as health providers, social-care providers, and police - involved in child protection.

The practical and behavioral skills needed to overcome these challenges are hard to teach in a traditional classroom or eLearning environment, but they can be developed through work experience. Toolwire's Immersive Learning Environments give students the opportunity to gain such experience in an authentic, virtual environment.

Professor Sally Glen, Deputy Vice Chancellor, Leeds Metropolitan University, comments, "The immersive learning enables students to understand and experience how to work as part of an inter-professional team. For example, there are police, healthcare, and probation officers characters within this Toolwire Learnscape for Social Work training."

The learning solution was designed to engage students with photorealistic, virtual environments that combine video interaction and real-world context. It replicates real-life child-protection scenarios with real-world decisions and implications to help students develop the skills and knowledge to deal sensitively with child-protection cases.

Sarah Frame, Director of Business Development, EMEA at Toolwire, adds, "The Munro Review commented that 'Theory and research are not always well integrated with practice, and there is a failure to align what is taught with the realities of contemporary social work practice.' By combining Toolwire Learnscapes with the high-quality content developed by the academic staff at Leeds Metropolitan University, we are able to address this issue."

This particular solution assists the social worker of tomorrow in becoming familiar with unfamiliar situations in which they will need to work. It will be available to undergraduates at Leeds University from September 2012.