Reflective Social Work Practice

In accordance with the recommendations of both the Social Work Reform Board and the Munro Review (2011), Social Workers need to be able to reflect on, critically evaluate and analyse the content and context of their practice in order to function effectively as qualified practitioners. This unit focuses on developing and applying the skills of critical and reflective awareness to the development and evaluation of your current practice. 

Since successful completion of the Post Graduate Diploma in Professional Social Work Practice yields a professional qualification as well as an academic award, you are expected to demonstrate professional knowledge, skill and capability, as well as academic attainment. To this end, BASW Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) specifies that you should complete a total of 170 days practice placement as part of the programme. As part of this unit, you will undertake a 100 day placement, working alongside professionally qualified practitioners (normally) in a statutory child care setting and will be expected to demonstrate through direct practice, assessed work and reflective learning logs your professional capability in accordance with the nine domains of the PCF at qualifying level. In this final stage you will be expected to evidence your capability consistently at a level that gives confidence that you are ready to progress to qualified practice as a newly qualified social worker.

This unit develops your skills as a critically reflective practitioner with the capacity for logical, systematic, critical and reflective reasoning with an ability to apply the theories and techniques of reflection within your practice. 

The unit also prepares you for your assessed year in practice once qualified as the content is mapped against the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Child and Family Practitioners (Department for Education 2018)

Developing Professional Social Work Practice

What skills and knowledge do social workers need in order to practice effectively with service users and carers? 

This unit is designed to enable learners to negotiate and create opportunities in the workplace to review and autonomously develop a critical response to key issues, theories and advanced skills involved in working directly with people in order to demonstrate your readiness for practice. 

You will undertake and collate into a workbook an integrated set of tasks to provide evidence of your readiness to go out on placement. Once this has been demonstrated, you will embark on your first period of assessed practice learning. This unit also incorporates your first practice placement in which you will be expected to demonstrate your understanding of and ability to apply flexibly and creatively theoretical and research perspectives to practice in complex and unpredictable work contexts. 

Your learning and development is facilitated by a series of skills development (SD) and shadowing days designed to assist your development of a range of advanced skills crucial to effective practice as a social worker. 

The unit requires you to make links between the theories explored here and elsewhere in the course and your experience of practice, in particular your development of effective interpersonal communication skills, and an awareness of service user perspectives.

In particular, this unit will focus on

-  Critical ethical dimension to practice by proactively examining discrimination and oppression in British society including its political direction and its manifestation at different levels in order to facilitate development of an advanced critical understanding of the social work task with vulnerable people within the parameters of care and control. 

-  The basis and practice of advanced communication skills and the manner in which they inform work with individuals and groups in complex and unpredictable social work contexts. 

-  A deep and systematic understanding of current theoretical discourses and research about human development which is used to inform assessment, planning and intervention. 

-  The theories and methods of intervention used in working directly with people and which inform the empowerment of people who use services selecting from a range of advanced techniques to generate transformative solutions.

The unit also prepares you for your Assessed year in practice once qualified as the content is mapped against the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Child and Family Practitioners (Department for Education 2018)

Ethical Perspectives On Law And Society

“Social workers have an obligation to conduct themselves ethically and to engage in ethical decision-making, including through partnership with people who use their services. Social workers are knowledgeable about the value base of their profession, its ethical standards and relevant law” (PCF Domain 2)

Social work law is a discrete area of academic and practice study whose function is to define, describe and analyse the nature, extent and complexity of the relationship between the law and social work. Its three major components are:

• Legal powers and duties, which provide social workers with their core mandate to practise. These are found in legislation, secondary or delegated legislation, judicial interpretation of legislation, policy guidance and practice guidance.
• Social work values, since social workers practise on the basis of certain ethical and professional principles, such as equality, empowerment, partnership, and anti-discriminatory practice.
• Administrative law, since the organisations within which social work is located are subject to the jurisdiction and control of the courts and to scrutiny by non-judicial authorities. Organisations are required to conduct themselves in ways that are lawful, reasonable and rational, and to act in accordance with rules of natural justice. There is legislation that regulates the way social work is conducted, as well as what it does.

In order to develop a critical understanding of how social work law is developed, implemented and applied, you will also need to understand two of the key underpinning Social Science disciplines informing Social Work knowledge and practice. This unit will therefore explore legal, ethical, social policy and sociological themes in the context of social work practice with vulnerable people and the social work value base.

The unit also prepares you for your assessed year in practice once qualified as the content is mapped against the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Child and Family Practitioners (Department for Education 2018)

Research Informed Child Care Practice

In order to work effectively with children, young people and families, social workers will require the skills to work across a range of services and to understand and work with the complexities characteristic of inter-professional collaboration and partnership. The way in which child care services are delivered is influenced by constant change in the organisation of services and change in the underpinning philosophies, theories, policies, legislation and research findings that inform practice. The reviews of social work education and practice by Lord Laming, the Social Work Reform Board and the Munro Review (2011) all require practitioners to be up to date with relevant knowledge and capable of research-informed practice when working with families. The BASW Professional Capabilities Framework ( PCF), domain 8 states that social workers should be able to ‘engage with, inform, and adapt to changing contexts that shape practice; operate effectively within own organisational frameworks and contribute to the development of services and organisations; operate effectively within multi agency and inter-professional settings’.

Furthermore, The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education benchmark statement for social work (2008) notes that social work knowledge includes “research-based concepts and critical explanations from social work theory and other disciplines that contribute to the knowledge base of social work, including their distinctive epistemological status and application to practice” (QAA 2008, p. 9). Social Workers must therefore be able to assess knowledge and to critically appraise “relevant social research and evaluation methodologies and the evidence base for social work” (QAA 2008, p.9).

This unit will enable learners to 

- to critically examine existing policy and patterns of provision having regard to the theory, values, philosophy and research evidence which should inform them and to evaluate their effectiveness. 

- Facilitate their critical exploration and analysis of the complex relationship and tensions between the development of services in the professional social work context and the research, policy, and law which informs practice in order to make recommendations for change and improvement in service delivery. 

- Provide opportunity for learners to critically evaluate the potential advantages and disadvantages of inter-professional and multi-disciplinary working and the requirements of interprofessional practice and policy and use personal reflection to analyse self and the wider implications of interdisciplinary work for your own practice and development.

- Equip learners with the skills to work proactively with others in accessing relevant research from a range of sources, develop critical responses to research findings and to disseminate these to a range of groups

The unit also prepares you for your Assessed year in practice once qualified as the content is mapped against the Knowledge and Skills Statement for Child and Family Practitioners (Department for Education 2018)