CONTINUING
PROFESSIONAL
DEVELOPMENT IN
SOCIAL WORK
Carmel Halton, Fred Powell and Margaret Scanlon
First published in Great Britain in 2015 by
Policy Press University of Bristol 1-9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK Tel +44 (0)117 954 5940 e-mail pp-info@bristol.ac.uk www.policypress.co.uk
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Contents
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank the Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW) for their cooperation in the administration of the online survey; their help was invaluable.We would also like to sincerely thank all of those IASW members who participated in the research. We would also like to thank the members of the School of Applied Social Studies Practice Advisory Board (PAB) for their assistance in developing the questionnaire.We are grateful to our colleagues in the Institute of Social Science in the 21st Century (ISS21) at University College Cork for their interest and support.
List of abbreviations
| AASW | Australian Association of Social Workers |
| CPD | Continuing professional development |
| DCYA | Department of Children and Youth Affairs |
| HCPC | Health and Care Professions Council (England) |
| HSE | Health Service Executive |
| IASW | Irish Association of Social Workers |
| NSQWB | National Social Work Qualifications Board |
| OMCYA | Office of the Minister for Children and Youth Affairs |
| PQ | Post-qualifying |
| RAE | Research Assessment Exercise |
| SSSC | Scottish Social Services Council |
| SWRB | Social Workers Registration Board (New Zealand) |
| SWTF | Social Work Task Force |
Preface
Continuing professional development (CPD) is broadly understood as the education of professionals after they have completed their formal training; but there the complexity begins. As we will see in this groundbreaking book, CPD takes many and diverse forms. It is underpinned by the idea that professionals need to renew and enhance their knowledge, skills and competencies throughout their professional life cycles. CPD embraces formal learning activities such as courses, conferences, seminars, workshops and informal learning through supervision, reading, reflection and peer support. It is located at the interface between professional practice and ongoing professional development.
Social work, like many other professions (law, medicine, teaching, nursing, etc), is in the process of incorporating CPD into its professional domain. Our study is about CPD and social work. We ask: what exactly is CPD? How is it impacting on social workers practice? Can it be made more relevant to social workers professional lives? Who benefits? In an era when deprofessionalisation threatens social workers role and task, does CPD help to put professionalisation back into social work? Or, is CPD simply a management tool to promote proceduralism and uniformity in social work practice globally, in the age of austerity? Can social workers utilise the reflective space offered by CPD to redefine themselves in challenging times? In a knowledge society, is CPD the key to social works future? Will CPD help social work practitioners remain relevant to the needs of service users?
While a substantial international literature has emerged about CPD over several decades, precious little research attention has been paid to what social workers want from CPD and what they think about it. Furthermore, while the literature often leads those interested or involved in CPD to assert that we know what it is, much of the knowledge is speculative, at best. Can we even answer with certainty straightforward questions such as: who engages with CPD? What do they think about CPD? What motivates them to engage in CPD? What are the barriers to participation in CPD? What are the most common forms of CPD? What is CPDs contribution to professional development? What do practitioners want from CPD? Are there diverse CPD agendas, reflecting differing value orientations between practitioners, managers, agencies and the state?We need to find answers to these questions.That is the purpose of this book.
The slogan think global, act local summarises the contemporary context of CPD. It is internationally promoted and debated but largely practised in local contexts. Our study surveys members of the Irish Association of Social Workers (IASW), locating their experiences within wider international debates and practices that define the discursive arena of CPD in social work. Ireland is one of the most globalised countries in the world. It is culturally located within the Anglo-Saxon tradition of social work. Its welfare state is based on a liberal market model, which it shares with Britain, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Canada. Like other advanced democracies, Ireland has been transformed into a multicultural society. Social work is challenged to reflexively respond to the scale and pace of global change as experienced locally. CPD will play a vital role in interpreting this change and reframing social work practice in post-modernity.
This international study is comprised of eight chapters. In Chapter One we set out to define and explain the international context of CPD.We look in particular at its emergence within social work and consider the implications for social work education and practice in a number of countries across the world.While we focus primarily on the debate within the English-speaking world, our analysis is relevant to social work globally.Asian countries, such as India, Singapore and, more recently, China, experience many of the same challenges that social work faces in the West, and, in this respect, professionals in these countries may find this book very helpful. In the 21st century, Latin America has been at the forefront of the debate on social justice. European social work has a largely shared agenda with the English-speaking world.
