Way hey! I have just passed my post-qualifying (PQ) award, thus ending a process which for me has lasted a little over three years. It has been a process which has evoked a plethora of emotions. These have ranged from the frustration and bewilderment of having to complete yet another piece of academic work, through to, dare I say it, enjoyment and the recognition that this has been a good opportunity to reflect on the development of my social work practice.

Broadly speaking the PQ award is made up of six individual units of work, aimed at demonstrating how practitioners have developed and enhanced their practice since they qualified.

I was pleased to hear that my six-month training programme to become an approved social worker would academically provide me with PQs 2, 3, 4 and 5! This training, partly run by Rob Brown a well-known and respected authority on the Mental Health Act, was unquestionably the best I have ever done. The course delivered a wide-ranging and stimulating programme to prepare us for the demands of this challenging position.

So this left me with just PQ1 and PQ6 to complete. PQ1 requires putting together a portfolio of work including a critical career review and a number of case studies to demonstrate how I have continued to link theory to practice and to show how I have improved my ability to work with clients in an anti-discriminatory and anti-oppressive way - the core values of social work. This proved a fairly straightforward if time-consuming task.

Having just finished my social work training I was still in tune with the language used and expected by academic institutions, but for colleagues who might have qualified more than 10 years ago this has been an all together more difficult challenge.

My final task was a portfolio of evidence (PQ6) to demonstrate how through my practice I have enabled others to develop their own practice. There was quite a bit of freedom on how you can demonstrate this; mostly people use their experience of supervision, management or training.

It is always helpful in busy social work practice to take a step back and look out of the gold fish bowl to reflect if and how we are developing our practice.

But when do we get the time to do this?

How fair is it to ask already hard-working, under-pressure social workers, many of whom don't even have the time to even read Community Care, to do additional work? Doing the PQ award has taken me away from my casework and family commitments, both of which has caused a level of frustration and resentment.

Nonetheless, I'm happy to have completed it. But don't talk to me about PQ7!

Mark Sloman is a social worker, community mental health team, Somerset