The paper describes and analyses the design and implementation of a higher education student placement program in the community services sector. Principally ideas about partnerships and social learning informed the design. The placement program represents a significant innovation in work-integrated learning, achieved through collaboration between a community services organisation and a university school of social science and humanities. It offers students a high quality learning environment arising from organisational capacity-building based on partnership principles. The paper traces the challenges and complexities of creating a student learning community that impacts positively on the wider host organisation. It also charts the implications for university involvement in community engaged knowledge production focused on enhancing the student experience.