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The annual social work registration period for practitioners in England has arrived again.
In under a week, Social Work England will open the three-month window, from 1 September to 30 November, for practitioners to renew their right to practise.
The renewal process requires social workers to complete an application form, pay a £90 registration fee and submit two pieces of continuing professional development (CPD), one of which must be peer-reviewed.
Yet with social workers facing heavy and complex caseloads and often working long hours, fulfilling their CPD obligations, as well as making time for learning more broadly, can be a significant challenge.
A Community Care poll of nearly 900 practitioners found that 90% struggled to make time for CPD, besides mandatory training, with 59% describing it as “very difficult”.
Only 13% said it was “easy” to find time for CPD.
A subscription to Community Care Inform Adults or Children makes it easy for you to fulfil Social Work England’s annual requirements to record continuing professional development (CPD) so that you can stay on the register.
Find out why by reading our comprehensive guide on how you can use Inform to make the most of your CPD.
What has your experience with CPD been like?
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It’s absolutely appalling
According to Schon (86ish) reflective practice is a myth ~ never actually happens as practice unless harnessed to double loop learning through supervision; if the model of supervision is something like the Peulet-Hawkins approach.
The adage we know more than we can tell (Polyani) is echoed throughout all parallel processes ie the peulet-hawkins stuff and especially with children and vulnerable adults and older people where capacity issues are in play.
Where’s the feature articles on Supervision in Social Work ~ come on CC; what did Eileen Munroe mean by Social Work is a Complex Adaptive System? And how does this impact on the management and supervision of sw’s?
How does attachment, anxiety and abandonment play out systemically? Is it useful?
What are the developmental axioms for child and adult theories of mind that are in use ratherthan merely espoused?
What’s the actual doing-ethic or Care Structure known as Sorge (Heidegger).
How has Analytical Philosophy and neoliberalusm sandwiched Continental Philosophy?
What’s the basis of our knowledge ~ does reflexivity have value anymore?
What is extreme commensurability and how does it manifest and differ from indeterminacy and incommensurability?
Second nature learning requires that fear is driven out and kept out. Is SWE a learning organisation? If the demands of accounting aren’t natural and flow then there’s a problem ~ if the problem is SWE then do something ~ it’s the 101 of waste management requirements which incidentally shape the SWE thinking and behaviour ~ the muda,muri and mura ~ the approach isn’t anything that a Lean or Kaizen or Six Sigma black belt would accept in any other industry! And, is wholly inappropriate for Social Work and Social Services. Period.
Actually it’s very easy. Write up any old tosh and get your mate to “peer review” it while you receprocate, get the £90 off safe in the knowledge that likelihood of SWE reading it is more unlikely than sightings of Loch Ness monster. No social worker should somersault through endless angst over this. Get it off towards the end of the process and the backlog will see you through. Also it’s not as if SWE are serious let alone capable of ensuring safe practice or raising standards is it? Do your job with commitment, be concientious, take pride in your role and your achievements. Leave the waffle and pretence to SWE and its fellow travellers.