Dan – Page 30 – DSDWEB: FREE STUDY GUIDES FOR CARE QUALIFICATIONS

Identify Sources of Support for Planning and Reviewing Own Learning and Development

February 11, 2019December 18, 2017 by Dan

This page is designed to answer the following questions:

2.1a Identify sources of support for their own learning and development (Care Certificate, Standard 2: Your Personal Development)
3.1 Identify sources of support and how they can be used for own learning and development (Level 2 Diploma in Care, Personal development in care settings)

Professional development is a very important part of the job in the health and social care sector. It is important to keep up-to-date with changing legislation and best practices and there is always room to improve. It is prudent to have a good understanding of the sources of support available to help with learning and development.

Manager

The best source of support for my own learning and development is my manager. I have regular supervisions with her to discuss any training that I think I need or she thinks I could benefit from. I also have regular formal observations (where my manager observes me doing a support task), professional discussions (where myself and my manager talk about a work-related subject) and an annual appraisal. These are documented and and go into my personnel and training records and my manager will offer guidance about how I can improve my practice.

Training & research

My company provides regular training and regular refreshers for training we have already undertaken. We have a dedicated training and development manager whom I can approach to discuss my needs. I can also do my own research to learn about topics that I feel I should know more about from books or the Internet.

Feedback from others

I find talking with my colleagues and other professionals from the care sector can be great sources of information. Regular team meetings allow the staff team to discuss work and learn from one another. A good example of knowledge-sharing between other professionals are the Registered Managers Networks run by Skills for Care (they are free and you don’t have to be a registered manager to attend, although you should contact the Chair first).

Mentors/tutors

For some people, a mentor can be a valuable source of learning. This is someone who is good at their job and give you pointers and advice about your work and how you could do it better. You can also learn from observing them and incorporating their good practice into your own. Similarly, if you are enrolled on a course or training program, your tutor/teacher may be able to give you valuable advice.

Policies & procedures

Company policies and procedures can also be great sources of information regarding my own personal development. By reading and understanding them, you are much better equipped to deal with situations in the correct manner and you can learn a lot about how your organisation and the health and social care sector as a whole work.

Experience

There is no better teacher than experience. By doing your job on a day-to-day basis, you will instinctively learn how to do it effectively and to the best of your ability. It is also useful to reflect on your work to aid your learning and development.

Summary

So, in summary, the main sources of support are:

Informal and formal conversation with manager
Supervisions
Appraisals
Observations
Professional discussions
Regular training
Own research
Talking with colleagues
Talking with professionals
Team meetings
Registered Managers Network
Mentors/tutors
Company policies and procedures

Example answer

Support for planning and reviewing your development can be obtained from many sources. Asking for feedback from colleagues, clients, client’s families and other professionals can help identify areas of development to consider. Quarterly supervisions and annual appraisals can also be used and mutually agreeable targets between yourself and your manager can be set. Quarterly observations and professional discussions can also be useful. Team meetings are also a great forum to discuss the service provision. Externally, you can get support online from a myriad of Internet sites as well as formal training on personal development.

NOTE: In my Diploma portfolio, I also included a copy of our Supervision Policy & Procedure for evidence.

Demonstrate the ability to reflect on work activities

November 27, 2018December 17, 2017 by Dan

Silhouette of a man reflecting on activities

Reflection is a very important skill to have for a health and social care worker. When reflecting on an activity, we ask ourselves why something is not working particularly well and how we can improve it or look at a task we have performed and ask ourselves how it went and what we do differently if we did it again.

Essentially, it is a thinking exercise that can be used to develop ourselves and make our work practices better. And you don’t need anything to do it. Just set aside five or ten minutes to think about what you’ve done. Many people choose to do this when they are lying in bed, just before they go to sleep.

Sometimes it is useful to reflect on work activities as a group, which means chatting with managers, colleagues and other professionals about something that has happened and how it may be avoided or improved going forward. You may also use reflection in one-on-one discussions with your manager, for example in your supervision. A common question for a manager to ask in supervision is ‘what do you think you can improve on?’

For your NVQ/Diploma, you will need to evidence that you have used reflection as a personal development tool in your day-to-day work. This may come from supervision notes or team meeting minutes or it may just be describing a situation to your tutor where you have used reflection. Below is the example that I used for my diploma:

One example is when my team were trying to promote a client’s independence by encouraging him to clean his bathroom. Each day he would be asked if he wanted to clean it and each day he said “no”. It was an almost robotic response. The service user has a learning disability, which means questions had to be kept simple, whilst still promoting choice, so after thinking about it I came up with the idea of changing the question to “do you want to clean your bathroom now or later?”. The next day, I asked the question and his first response was “later”, but after a couple of minutes, he changed his mind and said “I’ll do it now.” and went upstairs to clean his bathroom. This technique is still being used by the team.

Assess how well own knowledge skills and understanding meet standards

November 6, 2018December 16, 2017 by Dan

Although I have only been working in the health & social care sector for just over a year, I feel that my knowledge has increased exponentially. I have undergone training in Health & Safety, Food Hygiene, Manual Handling, Medication and First Aid (Common Induction Standards) and read my all of my company’s policies and procedures, which has given me the knowledge to carry out my role within the boundaries of the law, CQC compliance and best practice.

CQC has identified 13 standards that standard of care across the industry should not fall below. I regularly review these standards to ensure that my working practice is up to scratch.

EDIT 2018: Since I originally wrote this, I have undergone far more training including all CIS, internal training with my company (covering Safeguarding, Epilepsy, ASD, Mental Health, Learning Disability, MCA and Medication. I have also completed a leadership course (Aspiring Managers) part of which was the Manager Induction Standards.

As well as formal training, experience is also an essential part of the job. It is worth spending some time to reflect on the things that you have done well and those that you could do better. Whilst we should not let our successes go to our head and believe ourselves perfect, we should also not be too hard on ourselves when we make mistakes. Both should be treated as part of our own personal development.

Similarly, we can also improve our own knowledge, skills and understanding by asking others to assess our work. This could be a manager, colleagues or other professionals. One should not be afraid of constructive criticism as this is what drives us forward.

I feel it is always important to keep learning in this industry as legislation and best practice can change frequently. If you do not keep improving yourself and striving for the highest standards, you can easily get left behind.

For this reason, assessing your own skills, knowledge and understanding and aligning it with current standards requires that you look at what you have learned in the past and creating a road-map or Personal Development Plan to improve in the future. My own plan includes starting work on my Diploma Level 5 in early 2019. All staff should have their own PDP as agreed between themselves and their manager.

Explain Why Reflecting on Work Activities is an Important Way to Develop Knowledge, Skills and Practice

January 6, 2019December 15, 2017 by Dan

Reflective practice or self-reflection is an important skill for any health and social care worker to have. In fact,

…reflective capacity is regarded by many as an essential characteristic for professional competence.

Mann, K., Gordon, J. & MacLeod, A. Adv in Health Sci Educ (2009) 14: 595. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-007-9090-2

It involves looking back on something that you have done and actively and impartially considering your work, what went well, what didn’t go so well, what you could have done better and what you have learned.

It has the benefits of developing emotional intelligence, empathy and compassion and can increase creative thinking skills.

Reflecting on work activities is also a fantastic way of developing knowledge because it gives you breathing space to stand back, assess a situation and identify what you have done well and how you would do things better should a similar situation arise in the future.

It can be thought of as a way of bridging the gap between theory and practice, using the following three-step process:

Learn: This could be from books, the classroom, watching others, talking to others or other sources of learning/development.
Do: Use what you have learned in your practice.
Reflect: Think about your practice and critically examine the pros and cons.

The process of managing a situation and reflecting on it afterwards can give powerful insights about how to make improvement both personally and professionally and gain experience.