Surrey Skills Academy with support from Health Education Kent Surrey Sussex
The Care Certificate Framework
For
Adult Social Care Workers
Healthcare Support Workers
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The Care Certificate Framework
Your Personal Development
Standard 2 Main areas:
Ø I will agree a personal development plan
Ø I will develop my knowledge, skills and understanding
Links:
Code of conduct: Standard 6
Compassion in Practice (6 C’s):
Care, Compassion, Competence, Communication, Courage and Commitment
Standard 2
This standard explores personal development plans and identifies how to develop knowledge, skills and understanding to be able to undertake your role.
Your job description will outline the main duties and specifications of your role. Your induction will set you on a pathway of personal development, which will enable you to develop an awareness and understanding of how to get advice, information and support about the organisation, your own role and responsibilities and the role/responsibilities of others.
It will be necessary for you to be able to identify a variety of sources of support that will enable you to acquire knowledge and skills to carry out your role as well as contribute to your personal development. Examples may be:
· Handover meetings
· Team meetings
· Supervision
· Training courses
· Demonstration of tasks
· Reading or private study / internet research
· Books / magazines, professional publications
· Working alongside an experienced worker
· Other organisations / professional workers
· Other teams / workers / contacts
· Verbal discussions with team members / manager
One of the main functions of personal development is the requirement to undertake a personal development plan. A personal development plan sets out what skills and knowledge you need to achieve and how this is going to be done.
The process for agreeing a personal development plan should be carried out under supervision. Supervision offers a pathway for support using a structured approach. At each supervision and appraisal session you and your manager / supervisor should discuss what parts of your development plan have been achieved and what gaps are still outstanding. You will be able to discuss what learning you have achieved, how you use what you have learnt within your day to day role and remit, and how you can improve the standard of service delivery you provide. You will be able to discuss the expectation of your learning and development over the coming year and identify if there are any vocational awards that you may like to / or maybe required to complete for your work role. Your development plan should identify time frames for short, medium and long term aims and objectives, which will identify what knowledge and skills you need to acquire within those time frames and illustrate the variety of methods you wish to achieve this. Your employer has policies and procedures in place for supervision and appraisals and your manager will go through these with you as part of your induction.
It has already been noted how important it is for you to have an awareness of sources of support for your personal development but it is also important to have an awareness of how others may assist to review and prioritise learning needs and development opportunities. Thereby illustrating the value of feedback in helping to develop and improve the way you work.
During your day to day practice and routines, you should welcome feedback from others you work with. Positive feedback will enable you improve your practice. You can also give feedback to others; for example, you might provide feedback to a team member about how confident or unsure you feel in some areas, this will give an idea of how much support you might need from another, or areas of knowledge that need to be provided. You might have unknowingly made a mistake, and need to be aware of why it happened, or see someone do something in a particular way, and so by requesting feedback will be able to understand your own practice better.
Feedback on your performance will be provided and any plan for training will be identified and agreed to be accessed during the following year. Appraisals will show the areas in which you are doing well and other areas where improvements could be made, as well as agreeing plans of how this can be achieved.
In order to evaluate your own performance, supervisory sessions will need to be arranged regularly throughout the year. An appraisal will usually be carried out once a year. The aim of the appraisal is to evaluate your annual performance and provide feedback. It will give you the opportunity to agree aims and objectives, look at your job role, description and limits of responsibility, and how these have been met over the last year.
You will need to contribute to drawing up your own personal development plan. Within health and social care environments, all workers are encouraged to keep a record of their Continual Professional Development (CPD). Your supervision form and appraisal is just one part of CPD.
In order to record Continuing Professional Development (CPD) you might like to start by making up a portfolio, which evidences a permanent record of your learning. It will be portable, and you can take it with you if you go for an interview, or change jobs. Your induction will evidence that you have completed the induction standards, and should you complete a vocational qualification, your portfolio will show what you already know and can do, and may gain accreditation of prior learning. There are lots of systems available, from paper, internet or computer. Further advice can be discussed with your manager or mentor.
There are lots of activities that count as Continual Professional Development. Activities can be recorded, you may find keeping a diary of day to day events might help, or getting into the habit of writing up a self-reflective following each learning and development opportunity. However, the main theme is that you have learnt something or gained new skills that can be put into your care practice. The following is an example of what activities you might wish to record:
· Your induction
· Training workshops
· Shadowing professionals
· In house training events
· Reading books and professional magazines
· Watching relevant television programmes, DVDs
· Attending exhibitions, care seminars
· Internet research
· Professional discussions
Your portfolio should include records of your Care Certificate, training certificates and evidence that supports your learning, such as self-reflective accounts of any other activities you have completed. If you choose to use a paper portfolio, it should be organised logically and sequentially with an index at the front, but the objective is that you record your CPD in a way that suits you, and one you can access and add to in your preferred manner.
Your Continual Professional Development should be allied with your supervisory sessions and ultimately a personal development plan should be agreed. Supervision enhances your CPD in such a manner that should also be planned and agreed, thereby benchmarking your own personal development plan.
Each supervision requires preparation, open discussion and a responsibility from both the supervisor and supervisee to contribute positively. Goal(s) setting provide a framework through this ongoing process, and should be, specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time bound.
The following are examples of how to create a SMART goal:
· Specific: State exactly what the goal is for each supervision
· Measureable: How will the extent the goal has been met be measured
· Achievable: The action that will need to take place for the goal to be met
· Relevant: The goal should relate directly to the workers role
· Time bound: Target dates should be agreed, to guide successful completion
Supervision sessions are in general, confidential exchanges between the supervisor and supervisee and usually held on a one-to-one basis (group supervision maybe also be an appropriate approach depending on the circumstances). The supervision documentation which is used to record the supervision is an organisational document. This might be seen by others, for example during an inspection. The constraints of confidentiality within the supervision relationship should be clarified. If the supervision is recorded electronically, the levels of security and access should be agreed.
The quality of the relationship between the Supervisor and the Supervisee is an important, although complex, one. It is important the relationship works for both the supervisor and supervisee. This will determine the effectiveness and success of the supervision. All supervisory relationships should be subject to a written agreement to be drawn up within the first six weeks of the start of the relationship. This should include:
· Respective roles and responsibilities
· The frequency of supervision
· How agendas are to be drawn up
· How the supervision sessions are to be recorded
· How confidentiality should be maintained
· How differences in the working relationship should be managed
· How the diversity within service delivery and the supervisor and supervisees roles are handled
· How and when the agreement is to be reviewed
The four main functions of a supervisor are as follows:
The managing or administrative function relates to the role and responsibility of the supervisor to:
· Inform staff of the aims and objectives of the agency / organisation so that everyone works as a team towards common goals
· Inform staff clearly about their role and responsibilities within the workplace and advise / guide appropriately
· Ensure that work is being carried satisfactorily
· Review the work at regular intervals and check that the amount of work being given is appropriate
The educative or teaching function relates to the role and responsibility of the supervisor to:
· Enable staff to learn and assist them in developing their skills and knowledge further
· Provide staff with constructive feedback, both positive and negative, to enable staff to develop their work practice
The supportive or enabling function relates to the role and responsibility of the supervisor to:
· Enable staff to cope with the stresses that the work entails
· Enable staff to offload and talk about their feelings and how these may be affecting their work
· Provide a place where staff can talk about difficulties with other staff and receive advice on different strategies to use in order to resolve any difficulties. Staff always need to feel that the information will be held in strictest confidence and only shared with the appropriate people
The mediation or advocating function relates to the supervisor’s role also involves:
· Representing staff needs to higher management
· Negotiating for resources
· Dealing with any complaints about staff
· Working with other agencies to clarify any legal or resource constraints or requirements
In addition to the above it is important to identify learning opportunities. Learning opportunities available to you could be for example, when working alongside a team member, using a specific piece of equipment that you have no experience of before or attending training events.
It is important to identify your objectives and if necessary make a list. For example, before attending any training events, it is a good idea to identify what you are hoping to learn and how it will impact on your practice, there may be several areas you identify, and if you write these down you will have set your objectives. You may wish to compare them with the aims and objectives set by the trainer or event information.
It will be necessary for you to understand the functional level of literacy, numeracy and communication skills required to carry out your role and have an awareness of how to assess your current level. You will also know how to record progress in relation to your personal development.
It is important to make a commitment to develop your own English and Maths skills in order to carry out your work role efficiently and competently. It is common practice for most organisations to support their staff in maintaining the required literacy and numeracy skills.
It is possible to check or measure your current level of literacy, numeracy and communication skills against the Fundamental Skills qualifications. Fundamental Skills qualifications are available across five levels (Entry 1 to Level 2). These qualifications are intended for anyone wishing to develop their English, Mathematics or Information and Communication Technology skills.
It will also be necessary to describe how learning activities have improved your own knowledge, skills and understanding. Firstly, it is necessary to obtain an understanding of the main duties and responsibilities of your work role, for this you will need to refer back to Standard 1, where you explored what your role entailed.
It should then be noted that you will need to understand how the main duties and responsibilities of how your work role links into the best practice of the Health and Social Care National Occupational Standards (NOS). NOS describes best practice as bringing together skills, knowledge and values. NOS are valuable tools to be used as benchmarks for qualifications as well as for defining roles at work, staff recruitment, supervision and appraisal.
The Health and Social Care National Occupational Standards are jointly owned by all the alliance partners within Skills for Care and Skills for Health. Any reviews of NOS are undertaken jointly by all UK alliance partners.
After you have obtained an understanding of your work role and how it links into ‘best practice’ it is necessary to show that you have knowledge of your work role. Knowledge is where you can make sense of something to the extent that you understand why something needs to be done in a particular way and/or can explain it in your own words.
Relevant knowledge you will need to have includes:
· Legislation
· Policy and procedures
· Values and principles
· Effects of illnesses and disabilities