PORTFOLIO

Reflective Social Care Portfolio

Reflective Social Care Portfolio

Part I

Introduction

This material is provided for those involved in work in relation to the Post Qualifying/ Advanced Award in Social Work. It will be of interest and relevance to candidates and potential candidates. It is also of relevance to supporters of candidates:

as line managers

as supervisors

as workplace mentors

as sources of general guidance and support in relation to the PQ framework, (eg staff in training/employee development roles)

as providers of verification of practice competence in the form of focused references/

testimonials/reports

as providers of consultancy/tutoring such as within an agency-based structured support package focused on one or a group of specific PQ/AA requirements

The Diploma in Social Work, and the Post Qualifying and Advanced Awards in Social Work aim to develop reflective practitioners in the context of outcome or competence based professional Social Work practice. Such practice involves areas of activity, which are characterised by uncertainty and complex qualitative judgements. This is in contrast to pursuing a technical/procedural/administrative approach, which is sometimes thought necessary to combat credibility problems for social service workers and agencies. Reflective practice enables access to the 'sense-making' processes of practitioners (Atkinson, 2000, 149-164). Included within this paper are brief examples taken from portfolios assessed by the Post Qualifying Consortium for Social Work in Scotland during 2002, and extracted with the agreement of the candidates. These are printed in italics for clarity of presentation and are from PQ 1 Portfolios unless otherwise stated.

Exploration of the relevance of the concepts

Reflection is the process of giving meaning to experience, and uses complex reasoning processes to understand experiences:

by making connections between this current experience and previous similar/related situations

by considering the accumulated and synthesised knowledge base of the practitioner in relation to the context of the experience

by exploring the understanding or rationale related to questions of why, what, how and by whom 2

Reflective Practice can be understood in theoretical terms as deriving from the work of Donald Schon, an educational theorist - 'reflection in action' (Atkinson, 2000, 149-164), and has developed through what is now usually termed the experiential learning process as described and represented diagrammatically (Bleakley, 2000, pp11-24):

The experience or event at Stage 1 becomes the basis of reflection at Stage 2. This leads on to generalising and conceptualising at Stage 3. At this point, the experience may be seen as an isolated example or as part of a pattern and ideas, and theories may begin to form about what the pattern is. The hypothesis is then applied to further situations to test out its validity. If this is borne out, the 'lesson is learned' and is utilised in future situations resulting in more developed findings, so the cycle is repeated, and the learning proceeds in a spiral. Thus individuals learn by retrieving what they know or have experienced, reflecting on this, linking these observations to new concepts or existing knowledge or new circumstances, before trying out the revised problem solving technique which provides further findings and so the spiral continues (Bourner, 2000, ...