Continuing Professional Development in Social Work

✍ Scribed by Carmel Halton; Fred Powell; Margaret Scanlon

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2013
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 230
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Continuing professional development (CPD) has become a defining issue in twenty-first century social work. There is widespread consensus in favour of CPD. But what is it? Are there discernible international trends? What are the barriers to participating in CPD? What do social workers think about and want from CPD? This book seeks to answer these questions. Based on a survey and interviews with social work practitioners, CPD in social work offers a unique insight into the possibilities and challenges of CPD and the issues it presents for newly qualified and experienced social workers in practice. Combining the perspectives of social workers and their managers with international research, assures its global appeal. It offers possible directions for the future of post qualifying social work education, making it essential reading for practitioners, educators, managers and policy-makers.

✦ Table of Contents

Continuing Professional Development in Social Work
Contents
Acknowledgements
List of abbreviations
Preface
1. Continuing professional development: the international context
What is continuing professional development?
What is the nature and purpose of continuing professional development?
Supporting social workers
Professionalisation and continuing professional development
Continuing professional development models
Critical perspectives
Conclusion
2. Contemporary debates in social work education
Socio-political context of social work education
Competence and social work education
Managerialism and learning in the workplace
The Munro report
Reflective learning
Reconciling competency and reflective learning
Post-qualifying education, the university and public expenditure cuts
Who should provide post-qualifying social work education?
Developing the research and knowledge base
Conclusion
3. Continuing professional development: a national study
Social work in Ireland
Social work education in Ireland
The research project: methodology
Post-qualifying higher education
Course choice
Other forms of continuing professional development
Motivation for undertaking continuing professional development
Outcomes of continuing professional development
Informal and in-house continuing professional development
Impact of continuing professional development on practice
Future continuing professional development
Conclusion
4. Barriers to participation
Barriers to participation: previous research
Barriers to participation in other professions
Barriers to participation in social work continuing professional development in Ireland
Survey findings
Interviews and focus group
Continuing professional development in the context of regulation
Overcoming barriers to participation
Conclusion
5. Supervision
Context of supervision
Social work supervision: challenges and opportunities
Public inquiries: revitalising interest in social work supervision
What represents good-quality supervision?
Experiences of supervision
Linking supervision to continuing professional development
Cultures and contexts of supervision
Frequency and quality of supervision
Forms of supervision
Supervision training
Content of supervision
Conclusion
6. Learning and reflection
Complexity and professional judgement
Contextualising social work
Public inquiries into social work: the challenges posed for the profession
Connecting reflective inquiry to social work education and continuing professional development
Reflection and social work
Reflective praxis: implications for organisations
Supporting reflective engagement: the portfolio
Conclusion
7. Thinking and acting
Critical theory
The ‘Big Society’, social work and postmodernity
Marketisation and managerialism: ‘a new culture of social work’?
Managerialism and de-professionalisation: the McDonaldisation of social work?
Trust, contractualism and social work
Social work in a ‘runaway world’
Active citizenship and the mobilised ‘self’: the co-production of ‘social work’
Citizenship and social work: 10 principles for civic social work
Conclusion
8. Conclusion: challenges and futurescapes
Power and social work’s dual mandate
Social work and civil society in changing times
Civil society, communitarianism and social work
Social work, community development and political ideology
The role and task of social work in a multicultural society
Conclusion
References
Index