The Practice Educator's Handbook by Sarah Williams Lynne Rutter

Author:Sarah Williams, Lynne Rutter [Sarah Williams, Lynne Rutter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781529742459
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: SAGE Publications
Published: 2021-05-25T00:00:00+00:00

The concept of professional capability

So now we need to begin to bring some ideas together and think about how they can help us understand more about the development and assessment of professional capability. In Chapter 1 we introduced the concept of professional capability and discussed some of the reasons why the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) (BASW, 2018) has been deve-loped as a benchmark for social work practice. We looked at the fact that social work is a complex activity and considered how the introduction of the PCF attempts to capture that complexity and provide practice educators, assessors and managers with a tool that can be used to guide learning and judge performance both in initial social work education and in continuing professional development. We also discussed the more recent introduction of the Knowledge and Skills Statements (KSSs) (DoH, 2015; DfE, 2018) which set out the minimum required standards of knowledge and skills that must be achieved by social workers once they are employed in specific statutory roles.

Case Study 9.1 shows just how important it is to use assessment strategies that shape the ‘right sort’ of learning (deeper learning) and enable us to measure professional performance effectively. The College of Social Work hoped that the introduction of the PCF in 2012 would accomplish both of these objectives by offering a framework that not only set out what social workers should be achieving at different stages in their careers but also provided guidance on how the complexity of the task could be captured and judged. The ongoing relevance of the PCF as a way to benchmark social work capability was confirmed during the refresh process completed by BASW in 2018. This is important because, unlike the National Occupational Standards (TOPSS, 2002) that it replaced, the PCF (CSW, 2012c; BASW 2018) does not just focus on the component parts of practice but encourages educators to take into account the way that those parts are brought together to form professional expertise. This was a very important step forward in social work education because, for the first time, there was formal recognition that an oversimplified assessment system not only fails to measure practice capability but can actually drive social workers to develop a fragmented view of their practice that inadequately prepares them for their complex role in society. If used in isolation, the KSSs (DoH, 2015; DfE, 2018) could be seen as a retrograde step – a move back towards a more competence-based system. But the KSSs were not introduced to replace the PCF but to add another layer to the assessment of social work practice – giving more detailed guidance about what the government in England expects social workers undertaking specific social work roles and in specific practice settings to know and be able to do (BASW, 2018). Both the PCF and the KSSs are therefore considered to have an important role to play in ensuring the quality of social work practice. In the final part of this chapter we move on to explore the concept of holistic assessment.

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