Personal SWOT Analysis & Continuing Professional Development

Skip To:

Preparing for Social Care Practice

Personal SWOT Analysis Example

Strengths

I understand the necessity of empowering the service users and managing their well-being and recognizing their needs to engage in self-treatment where appropriate.
I can exhaustively gather all the relevant information to serve people with social care needs.
I also do my best to connect with people with social care needs with the conscious need of professional, legal, and ethical boundaries.
I volunteered in social care services during my time as a learner and was able to take responsibility for my professional development with the knowledge I acquired in school (Herman, 2017).

Weaknesses

Due to my passion for social care, I sometimes lack the patience to effectively manage conflicts with colleagues who do not care about or treat the clients properly.
After the exhaustive gathering of the information that can help me provide efficient care to service users, sometimes I tend to fall short in the critical evaluation of the information gathered during the assessment process.
I fail to recognise my life experiences and personal values have an influence in my professional practice, something that has affected the quality of care I deliver to clients (McHugh, 2020).
Due to my extreme concern for the social care clients’ safety, I sometimes fail to understand the clients have a right to self-determination and take risks.

Opportunities

Being a learner who has been passionate about social care, I paid attention to the emerging trends in social care over the years and the change in the dynamics of social care’s legislative basis at the local, national and international levels.
Due to my years of experience as an amateur volunteer, I have learned the need for professional development, and this gives me a unique opportunity to pay attention to the
Social and digital media grants social care workers an opportunity to communicate with and even gather information about the client; this requires the proper understanding of the social care ethics.
Volunteering in social care work, both as a learner and a professional has granted me an understanding of essential participation in both management and direct social care activities. I will continue to value this after joining the social care practice (Herman, 2017).

Threats

I lack a balanced approach for practice and academic-based, which threatens my effective social care service.
Despite my deliberate and consistent effort to understand the recent changes in legislation surrounding social care, I sometimes tend to miss changes in the guideline, which threatens my future in practice and the quality of my service (McHugh, 2020).
My social care practice effectiveness is threatened by a lack of clear and concise documentation due to my passion for directly taking care of my clients.
The language barrier is another threat to social care, especially for all clients who do not understand English.

Part 2. Learning Goals

Upon placement, I intend to demonstrate professional and ethical behavior, which will require consistent practice.
I also intend to pay close attention and fully understand diversity and how it affects my social care effectiveness.
I also aim to understand the policies and changes in legislation affecting social care, something that I will cultivate throughout my career.
Since I have learned about social media’s power, I anticipate to understand the ethics surrounding the use of social media in social work to maintain professionalism and client confidentiality (Nordstrand, 2017).
I would also like to learn how to manage my workload by balancing practice-oriented and academic-oriented responsibility as I advance through the career.

Part 3. Continuing Professional Development

Definition of Continuing professional development (CPD)

Continuing professional development (CPD) is consistent progress of developing, maintaining, and documentation of professional skills in social care. These skills may be acquired formally through academia and informally by casually observing social care workers worldwide. The professionals are obliged to accumulate knowledge throughout their practice and effectively implement it to improve their skills and general field.

Students and professionals in social care commit to improving their professional capacity. CPD is a process designed to identify the potential of a professional, identify their development needs, and make the necessary moves for the best interest of their career and clients. The CPD process entails identifying the social care needs to detect the potential for further improvement (Hudson et al., 2021).

CPD as a Development Plan

Additionally, the implement the development plan both formally and informally, both of which entail acquiring the necessary skills and knowledge in general. With this knowledge, a learner or professional in social care can then reflect on their past day-to-day performance, after which they implement the knowledge, getting rid of the conscious and unconscious incompetence. Finally, they share the plan with other learned and professionals for the betterment of social care services globally, which can be achieved via social media.

Application of Continuous Professional Development in Academia

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is, therefore, a concept that should be understood in the academic setting to guarantee universal development of social care services. I allow social care workers to maintain their knowledge and skills throughout the career, and in addition to being up-to-date with the development in knowledge and social care needs, a process should be effortless after understanding its importance and the necessary process.

Continuous Professional Development in Social Care Quality

CPD also allows for the standardization of social care quality while providing personalised social care to different cultures while paying attention to the necessary details. It also guarantees that the new social care workers are groomed through their participation in the practice by encouraging the experienced social workers to freely share their knowledge and skill (McMahon, 2017). In addition to this, introducing the concept to newer social care workers can give them the courage to seek mentorship from experienced social workers.

It also encourages the newly trained social workers to consistently seek progress, which contributes to the overall improvement of the field. CPD also guarantees consistent assessment and supervision of newly trained and experienced social workers, for example, through the involvement of direct observation, supervision records, critical reflection, and feedback for the beneficiaries of social care, all of which can be flexibly documented and supervised, but within the legal and ethical bounds.

Continuous Professional Development (CPD) Training

Training of social care workers on Continuous Professional Development (CPD) and consistent reminders for the beneficial mixture of various learning activities on current and future practice. They get exposure to formal activities, such as attendance to courses and informal activities, such as causal sharing of knowledge and skills, especially in various social care workers’ social settings. This exposure provides social workers with the activities that would most efficiently improve the quality of service delivered.

CPD also helps social workers participate and contribute directly to the improvement of social care services and their mode of delivery. This is because the standards focus on the benefits of the continuation of professional development that an individual social worker can provide and the collective effort and success of various social workers (Ryan et al., 2020). Therefore, with CPD, social care becomes a field where individual social care workers take personal responsibility for the overall development of service delivery. This is done by identifying the need to improve the field in general, acquire the necessary knowledge, reflect on the overall sector, and implement the skills and knowledge acquired.

References

Herman, M., 2017. Creating a Personal SWOT Analysis. MRH Enterprises LLC. Fecha de consulta, 20.
Hudson, C., Goel, K. and Cowie, J., 2021. Making continuing professional development relevant and accessible in regional social work. Australian Social Work, 74(1), pp.29-41.
McHugh, J., 2020. Social Care Work: The Shaping of an Emerging Profession. Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies, 20(2), p.7.
McMahon, G.T., 2017. The leadership case for investing in continuing professional development. Academic Medicine, 92(8), pp.1075-1077.
Nordstrand, M., 2017. Practice supervisors’ perceptions of social work students and their placements–an exploratory study in the Norwegian context. Social Work Education, 36(5), pp.481-494.
Ryan, A., Hatala, R., Brydges, R. and Molloy, E., 2020. Learning With Patients, Students, and Peers: Continuing Professional Development in the Solo Practitioner Workplace. Journal of Continuing Education in the Health Professions, 40(4), pp.283-288.