a) Why it is important for a social care worker to seek feedback on performance. b) The different ways that people may react to receiving constructive feedback. c) Why it is important for a social care worker to use the feedback to improve their practice.

You arrange a mentor meeting to feedback to the social care worker. You have comments to make which include both praise and constructive criticism.

Write notes to prepare for your meeting. In your notes, explain :

•    Why it is important for a social care worker to seek feedback on performance.

•   The different ways that people may react to receiving constructive feedback.

•   Why it is important for a social care worker to use the feedback to improve their practice

Ans.

 

Meeting Date : 01/12/2014                                                                                   Time : 14:30

Meeting Place : Room No. # 4

Everyone expects inspiration and progression within their service provision. And it is only possible when they obtain comments or feedback from service users, their families, colleagues, manager and all other professionals. Social workers are constantly required to give feedback, both to colleagues and to service users and also seek from colleagues and service users and their families. One way of approaching this is to reflect on your own experiences of getting feedback, and what makes it possible to ‘hear’ or not.

Why it is important to obtain feedback?

I understand you all work hard and provide a good service. But how you will know that your hard work and dedication is meeting people’s expectation following organisation’s policies and procedures. The only way you can be aware of quality of your work by obtaining feedback from others. List of the importance of obtaining feedback are as follows:

• People want their work to be appreciated

• People need encouragement and want to be praised for the good job what they have done. 

• Feedback helps to identify learning and development needs. 

• It is necessary for professional development. 

• Without feedback, it is impossible for people to learn how to be more effective in their jobs

• Positive, non-judgmental feedback is both instructive and empowering.

Feedback comes from other people in many different forms, both verbal and non-verbal. We receive feedback from others about our behaviour, our skills, our values, the way we relate to others, and about our very identity. For this reason, feedback is central to the process of reflection.

Constructive feedback is essential to improve and increase the effectiveness of the service. It helps social care worker to adhere in learning and developing new skills. 

How people can react on constructive feedback or criticism :

React :

•  People may react defensively. 

• They may counterattack.

• They may flee or become emotional. 

• They may reluctantly accept the reprimand and promise to improve. 

• They may try to blame others. 

• They may strive to change the subject.

Why it is important for a social care worker to use the feedback to improve their practice?

Feedback is the other way you can be aware of your strengths, skills and learning and development needs in your service provision. You can use feedback to identify your learning and development needs to improve your practice and receive appreciation for your service. Without feedback you will remain unaware of the practice which is not meeting requirements or expectation. If feedback doesn’t meet your expectation then you should work on areas to improve your practice and adhere to learning and development you require to be more skilled and professional and provide service according to. Blogger Foisal Talukdar explains term ‘feedback’ is ‘evaluation of your work, skills, learning’s and understandings’. You can reflect on your practice but you cannot evaluate your own work, practice and skills. In economy evaluation work different way, where a possessor can evaluate his possession only when it is not possessed by others apart from him alone. Therefore you require obtaining feedback to evaluate your practice and improve it. It is required by law to reflect on your practice and adhere to learn and improve it.

                                                                                                                      By Md. Foisal Miah Talukdar

'Children's economy for public'

Dear Readers,
I have posted a article on my other blog 'Economy for public: How currency value changes? What is Goverment's debt? How can you contribute to your economy?' You may find it very useful to know. Your wisdom should not be limited or should not have any boundary. It should expand and spread. Nothing is little or difficult to learn. Author thinks and scribbles all day to enlighten your intellect. It becomes worthy when you read and share it to enlighten others.
Many Thanks
Foisal Talukdar

You may be interested

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There are more tips coming about travel and vacations. Please share this to your family and friends if you find it quite useful.
Kind Regards
Foisal Talukdar

Identify five different skills or approaches that might help resolve conflict

Conflict arises among colleagues and others in care sector mostly from different views, method of workings and personal experiences. Obviously there are plenty of other reasons like inequality, domination, discrimination and personal interests (such as conflict for position) can raise conflicts as well. However, conflict and argument should neither occur in front of service user nor should reflect on service standard.

• Good attitude and good relationships (Good partnership working): As far as possible, make sure that you treat others calmly and try to build mutual respect. Do your best to be courteous to one-another and remain constructive even under pressure.
• Paying undivided attention to the interests that are being presented: By listening carefully you'll most-likely understand why the person is adopting his or her position.
• Listen first; talk second: To solve a problem effectively you have to understand what person’s view is and where it is coming from before defending your own position.
• Keep people and problems separate: Remember you are in conflict to an issue not to a person. By separating the problem from the person, real issues can be debated without damaging working relationships.
• Compromising Attitude: Compromising helps to find a solution that will at least partially satisfy everyone. Everyone is expected to give up something and the compromiser him- or she also expects to relinquish something.

 Moral Note: Remember, the people you are serving are someone’s parents, grandparents and above all our people. Reflect and imagine yourself in the same situation after 30-50 years and should you expect the same you are doing now. Because, it is said that what goes around comes around. And I have found a true relativity to the Newton’s third rule is ‘Every action has equal or opposite reaction.’ Do not do anything that you would not expect when you will be like them.

Explain how to raise awareness of diversity, equality and inclusion 

Identify Three Ways of Challenging Discrimination And How Each Will Promote Changes

By Md. Foisal Miah Talukdar

 

Identify one report on serious failure to protect individual from abuse. Describe the unsafe practice in review.

Mr. X is physically frail and immobile who lives in a care home. Due to lack of his mobility and other age related issues, Mr. X supposed to assist by two professional carers for personal care and mobility using equipment. One of the carer found nobody in his unit to assist him in one of the afternoon and tried himself to assist Mr. X to the lavatory as Mr. X told him it is an emergency and he needed to access the lavatory without delay. While carer was helping Mr. X on his own to the lavatory, Mr. X fell of the sling and broke his hip. In daily care records it is found that carer very often assist him on his own.

Review:  Although care plan clearly stated that two carers should assist Mr. X according to risk assessment but carer has been failure to follow rules and procedure. Physical abuse has occurred in this incident. Also this physical abuse can lead Mr. X to psychological abuse through trauma (afraid of being moved). As an employee, he should not only to comply with rules and procedure and follow the care plan but also has responsibility to inform employer if he notices any hazardous handling activities in the workplace. Also he should inform manager if he needs resources which he has been failure to do. Unsafe practices identified in this incidence has listed below –

Ø  Mr. X is assisted and manhandled by one carer

Ø  Not following rules and procedures by employee

Ø  Supervision has not been carried out properly as carer has assisted Mr. X previously on his own

Ø  Adequate resources and information has not been provided by the company or carer was not following any

Ø  Adequate human resource has not been provided by the employer

Ø  Employer has also been failure to maintain safe working environment.

By Md. Foisal Miah Talukdar

Identify national policies and local systems that relate to safeguarding and protection from abuse

                                                

Dear Readers,
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Thanks & Merry Christmas
Foisal Talukdar

Reflective Practice Pros and Cons

Reflective practice is about the process of thinking about your practice and taking personal responsibility for improving your professional skills. Reflection enables you to review the positive aspects of your own practice in order to build on your successes and to identify areas for improvement or further development.

What is Reflective practice : Reflective practice is the analysis of everyday working practices to improve practices and promote professional development. It involves critically analysing yours actions with the goal of improving yours professional practices.

Working in a professional manner needs a continuous process of reflection, which involves looking at your practices, ideas and actions, then evaluating their effectiveness in order to make improvements. Reflection stages are as follows –

Stage 1: Description of the event

Describe in detail the event you are reflecting on. Include where you were;who else was there; why were you there; what were you doing; what were other people doing; what the context of the event was; what happened; what your part in this was; what parts did the other people play; what was the result.

Stage 2: Feelings and Thoughts (Self awareness)

At this stage, try to recall and explore those things that were going on inside your head. Include:

• How you were feeling when the event started?
• What you were thinking about at the time?
• How did it make you feel?
• How did other people make you feel?
• How did you feel about the outcome of the event?
• What do you think about it now?

Stage 3: Evaluation

Try to evaluate or make a judgement about what has happened. Consider what was good about the experience and what was bad about the experience or what did or did not go so well.

Stage 4: Analysis

Break the event down into its component parts so they can be explored separately. You may need to ask more detailed questions about the answers to the last stage. Include:

• What went well?
• What did you do well?
• What did others do well?
• What went wrong or did not turn out how it should have done?
• In what way did you or others contribute to this?

Stage 5: Conclusion 

This differs from the evaluation stage in that now you have explored the issue from different angles and have a lot of information to base your judgement. It is here that you are likely to develop insight into you own and other people’s behaviour in terms of how they contributed to the outcome of the event. Remember the purpose of reflection is to learn from an experience. Without detailed analysis and honest exploration that occurs during all the previous stages, it is unlikely that all aspects of the event will be taken into account and therefore valuable opportunities for learning can be missed. During this stage you should ask yourself what you could have done differently.

Stage 6: Action Plan 

During this stage you should think yourself forward into encountering the event again and to plan what you would do – would you act differently or would you be likely to do the same?

Why is reflective practice so important?

Reflecting on your practice can enhance and improve your confidence and self esteem because you can look at what you are doing well, the things you have learnt and achieved and feel good about yourself especially if you have done something with ease that you used to find difficult or if you have done something good you never thought you would do. This then gives you confidence to continue working well and to aim to try other new things or to use what new skills or knowledge you have gained in your practice. As a social care worker you are responsible for providing care to the best of your ability to service user and their families. You need to focus on your knowledge, skills and behaviour to ensure that you are able to meet the demands made on you by this commitment.

Reflective practice is part of the requirement for social care worker constantly to update professional skills. Keeping a portfolio or plan or action offers considerable opportunity for reflection on ongoing development. Supervision and reviews enable you to identify strengths and areas of opportunity for future development.

You should consider the ways in which you interact and communicate with your colleagues, service user and other professionals. The profession depends on a culture of mutual support. You should aim to become self-aware, self-directing and in touch with any environment.

Quality and effective service delivery is about providing a service in the best possible way. It is about anticipating, conforming to and sometimes exceeding the clients’ expectations and requirements

Maintaining the effectiveness of service

In maintaining the effectiveness of the service, either at a service provider or individual worker level, it is essential to be clear on what the quality standards are and how they should be put into practice, and to monitor and regularly review how the service is performing in relation to those standards.

When you will reflect on your practice and evaluate them, you may bring some significant change in your practice to improve quality of individual’s life and service provision.

Some services arrange a process called a ‘self-assessment’, where each year they compare staff and client views on how they meet the standards. This information is combined and together, staff and clients decide on some actions for improving the service for the following year.

You will have to follow the codes of conduct and practice what is set out by government and your organisation In order to provide effective quality service.

As a social care worker you will have criteria to guide your practice and be clear about what standards of conduct you are expected to meet. You are encouraged to use the codes to examine your own practice and to look for areas in which you can improve.

To work accordance with codes of practice and conduct a social care worker must :

·           

      Protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers

·         Strive to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and carers

·         Promote the independence of service users while protecting them as far as possible from danger or harm

·         Respect the rights of service users while seeking to ensure that your behaviour does not harm them or other people

·         Uphold public trust and confidence in social care services

·       Be accountable for the quality of their work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving their knowledge and skills.

Remember, you will have to comply with general codes of practice and conduct in your reflective practice or including your reflective practice in order to provide better quality services.

Checklist to evaluate practice :

• How did you approach your work?
• Was your approach positive?
• How did the way you worked affect the service users? 
• How did the way you worked affect your colleague?
• Which was the best aspect of the work you did?
• Which was the worst aspect of the work you did?
• Are there any areas in which you could improve?
• What are they and how you will you tackle them?       

---------------------------------- Foisal Talukdar