How do you learn in your social work role?

Two abiding facts about social work are that practitioners are time poor and that continuing professional development (CPD) is critically important for good practice.

Community Care Inform wants to find out how you manage the evident tension between these truths, through a survey designed to paint a comprehensive picture of how social workers – and other social care practitioners – learn today.

The survey asks how much time you feel you need for learning and research each week to do your job to the best of your ability and – how much you actually have.

Do you have enough time to learn?

We want to find out if you lack time for sufficient learning and if so, why. Is it high caseloads, vacancies on your team, insufficient learning resources or a lack of support to carry out CPD from your manager?

We also want to find out what impact this learning deficit is having on you and your career.

We also want to hear about how your organisation supports you in your learning and how this could be improved, as well as how you like to consume learning, for example, through face-to-face courses, webinars, podcasts or written guidance.

How we plan to use research findings

Community Care Inform plans to use the research to highlight practitioners’ experiences of, and opportunities for, learning and how this can be improved to enhance practice.

We will do this by sharing results from the survey, including on the Community Care website, and working with employers to help them apply the findings in their workplaces.

As an added incentive to take part, you will be given the option to be entered into a draw to receive a £50 gift voucher from One4All. The survey will be open until the end of the summer.