Abstract
The paper starts with a brief autobiographical reflective narration of my own experience as a social worker. The purpose is to demonstrate and contextualise the interaction, change and inherent ambivalences in relation to my own experience of post-qualifying learning. I qualified as a social worker in 1978. My first employment was with the Department of Social Welfare (Coloured Affairs) in the Western Cape. During the first week of my induction I was introduced to two important people, my supervisor and the “In-service training manager” (ISTM). My supervisor was responsible for supervising my day to day workload. The ISTM was exclusively responsible for guiding and testing me on the content of a thick lever-arch file called the in-service training manual. The latter contained all the relevant legislation, policies and departmental procedures that I had to study and know before becoming a permanently employed social worker and public servant. Every Friday I would religiously go to the inservice training guru to be tested on the contents of the file. The ISTM was also kept informed by my supervisor about my performance on the job and would comment on my progress as indicated by my “stats”. The latter was a record of how many clients I had seen and what the results achieved on each of these were. This process would continue until the in-service training was satisfactorily completed.
Highlights
The paper starts with a brief autobiographical reflective narration of my own experience as a social worker
What are the experiences, opportunities and challenges of social workers with Continuing professional development (CPD)?. What are their suggestions on how these challenges could be addressed? It must be noted that this study focused on the perceptions of social worker about their postqualifying CPD experiences in general
The analysis for the purposes of this paper focuses on the opportunities and challenges as well as the ways in which these could be addressed to improve the status, systems and quality of CPD for social workers in practice
Summary
The paper starts with a brief autobiographical reflective narration of my own experience as a social worker. IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF CPD PROGRAMMES Respondents linked CPD directly to (a) the maintenance of professional standards, and (b) opportunities for career development They felt that the content of CPD must be regulated and be relevant to what is expected from them in the work place as well as to the needs of social workers. The suggestions made pertaining to the role of service providers of CPD were in line with the perceptions of the social workers about the lack of adequate and competent service providers, poor coordination and the absence of a coherent, cost-effective and holistic “package” of CPD services In regard to their suggestions for redress, the respondents felt that coordination should be improved and quality assurance of the course content must be undertaken by credible experts in the field. They said that Council should regularly publish available CPD opportunities in its newsletters and on its website
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