CPD example 2: training course

Type of CPD

Leadership, management or mentoring

Description

How as a supervisor I can provide effective leadership, meeting the social work standards and ensuring quality supervision to those I supervise.

Date of CPD activity

14 February 2022

Describe what you have learnt from doing this CPD activity

I have learned a lot about how to effectively support social workers that I am supervising. In particular the course focused on further developing my practice around:

1. The benefits of supervision. That is for myself and providing good quality supervision for those that I supervise (4.2). Through the course undertaken I have been able to support social workers to reflect more critically on their practice (standard 4.2) within supervision. I have been able to learn tools that have enabled me to ask more reflective style questions within supervision. Part of the course also involved learning and applying reflective practice tools. For example I accessed the research in practice reflective practice toolkit. This has helped me to instigate more thorough discussions with social workers about their interventions and to reflect on the impact for service users. Alongside this I have also learned reflective models such as Gibbs cycle of reflection. As part of the course I had mentors sessions and my supervision practice observed. I also supported with developing a new proforma to be used in South Gloucestershire for supervisee's.
2. How to challenge oppression through effective critical reflection (4.4). As part of the course I have further developed my practice in relation to challenging oppression through critical reflection. For example in my second observation my mentor was able to observe discussions with a social worker around our intervention. We were able to reflect on the impact of our own values on practice.

3. How to ensure that service users are having outcomes met as required (4.3 and 4.5). As part of the course I also demonstrated an ability to gain feedback and learn from the experiences of services users and communities. I have been supporting with joint visits with social workers and providing feedback. For example I have recently supported a social worker completing an ASYE programme. As part of this I gained feedback from the service user involved about their experiences of adult safeguarding.

   I have also been part of a team that has devised a new supervision proforma to enable supervisors to discuss cases and risk in a more thorough and reflective way with our own supervisors (4.2, 4.4, 4.8).

   As part of the course I had supervisions observed my a mentor. This enabled me to critically reflect on my own practice as a mentor (standard 4.2). The mentor observed supervision and recommended areas of practice that could be further developed. It was identified that I could reflect more with supervisees on practice and further consider the emotional impact of casework with those I support within supervisions.

   As a result of this course my practice has further developed around supporting social workers to reflect on their practice. I had positive feedback from my mentor and demonstrated learning from the course.

   As part of the observations I was able to demonstrate an ability to engage with social workers around critically reflective practice 4.2). I was able to demonstrate that I had discussions with social workers about interventions with service users and the impact of values and ethics (4.4).

Reflect on and describe the positive impact the CPD activity has had (or will have) on your practice and the people you work with

The opportunity to discuss my own experiences of supervision with my mentor made me realise I had not done this in enough depth with my own supervisees. As such I now speak with social workers about what they want to achieve from supervision. The agenda therefore is much more tailored now to the individual social worker.

The impact of the course is that I now use tools such as I the CEDAR and GROW model. I favoured the 70 coaching questions for managers using the GROW model (Dan McCarthy). Using these models has now meant that I am supporting social workers to critically reflect on their own practice and identifying their own learning and development needs.

In workshop 5 of the course we considered the risks of not reflecting within supervision. When we brainstormed as a group we realised that the risks were wide ranging and included that oppression, discrimination and poor practice could go unnoticed. I have also since read that poor supervision had been a theme in case reviews (Munroe and Hardie). Therefore I have committed to ensuring that deeper case reflections are part of supervision.

I have learned that if supervisees/social workers struggle to share in supervision, I need to make time in other contexts to understand their practice and to support them to critically reflect. For example, I have now attended more joint visits. For example I supported a joint visit to a service users family who were unhappy with how a safeguarding enquiry had taken place. We spent time before and after the visit reflecting on where practice had been effective and where practice could have been improved. Just being part of the visit helped me to understand the situation more from the service users point of view.

Describe what you have learnt from discussing this CPD with a peer

I discussed what I had learned from the course with my mentor (peer). The outcome of this was as follows:

• I learned the importance of reflective practice in supervision and outside of supervision - to ensure that practice is of a high standard (4.2/4.3)
• I learned that having quality supervision is also important for me as a supervisor. This is to discuss high risks cases and to identify my own CPD needs (4.2)
• I learned from my peer the importance of leadership and ensuring that my practice is up to date and in line with policy development and best practice (4.3)
• It has impacted positively because I now have a clear PDPR and I am currently working on developing the team around 3c's approach in safeguarding.
• Through course and peer reflection I am now gathering feedback from service users more. When talking with service users about safeguarding enquiries I am asking for feedback around how we improve practice.
• I am also encouraging social workers to also gain this feedback to ensure they we can reflect on whether service users outcomes are being met and how we improve practice. Looking at how our own values impact on the experience that service users have.
• To reflect with a peer has helped me to recognise strengths and where I can further develop my own practice as a supervisee (4.8)
• Attending the workshops (as part of course) and the reflection with my peer has helped me to adapt supervision style to the person.
• As a result, for example I have spent much more time focused on well-being with social workers. The reflection made me consider trauma informed practice.
• The peer reflection has ensured that I continue to place importance of taking time out of my working day/week for CPD activities and how to help develop team in this context

Which parts of the CPD standard have you met by doing this activity?

• Standard 4.1: Incorporate feedback from a range of sources, including from people with lived experience of my social work practice.
• Standard 4.2: Use supervision and feedback to critically reflect on, and identify my learning needs, including how I use research and evidence to inform my practice.
• Standard 4.3: Keep my practice up to date and record how I use research, theories and frameworks to inform my practice and my professional judgement.
• Standard 4.4: Demonstrate good subject knowledge on key aspects of social work practice and develop knowledge of current issues in society and social policies impacting on social work.
• Standard 4.5: Contribute to an open and creative learning culture in the workplace to discuss, reflect on and share best practice.
• Standard 4.6: Reflect on my learning activities and evidence what impact continuing professional development has on the quality of my practice. (You will meet this by recording CPD)
• Standard 4.7: Record my learning and reflection on a regular basis and in accordance with Social Work England’s guidance on continuing professional development. (You will meet this by recording CPD)
• Standard 4.8: Reflect on my own values and challenge the impact they have on my practice.