Continuing professional development for social workers: Social worker or organisation LED? Whose choice?

Abstract

The thesis investigates social workers’ perspectives on Continuing Professional Development (CPD), focusing on how decisions about CPD are made, who makes them and the facilitators and constraints that govern these choices. The study acknowledges the regulatory requirement since 2021 for social workers in England to document and record two CPD activities annually to maintain their registration to practice. The study conducted primary qualitative research with twenty-one social work practitioners in England at various stages in their careers. The research data were collected in 2021/22 during COVID 19 Pandemic, with the shift to a virtual “socially distanced” approach displacing face-to-face interaction in fieldwork for the study as well as for practitioners to access CPD opportunities. Fieldwork was carried out using semi-structured narrative interviews that captured the voices and lived experiences of participants. Reflexive thematic analysis of data (Braun and Clarke, 2020) highlights an array of opportunities, challenges, and realities social workers’ encounter in their practice with service users, alongside juggling work/life balance to meet their CPD requirements. The study is underpinned by a theoretical framework that interrogates contemporary social work practice from a range of critical perspectives drawing on the sociological imagination (Mills, 1959), emancipatory pedagogies (Freire,1970), having and being as modes of existence (Fromm, 1976) and technologies of power including surveillance, bureaucracy, governmentality, and the production of docile bodies (Foucault, 1977). The voices of the participants and findings make a unique contribution to the debate on social work practice, a profession in perma-crisis, whose role, value, and survival is being brought into question (Maylea, 2021). The study illustrates that although social workers were keen to take advantage of CPD opportunities, especially in therapeutic and specialist interventionist roles, organisations lacked structure, focus and finance to facilitate career development. In this context personal initiative and motivation were key factors in making the most of CPD. The study identifies organisational problems such as lack of dedicated study time, heavy caseloads for social workers to manage, organisational and political pressures that restrict access to CPD. Social workers’ sense a lack of control and choice over CPD reflects top-down organisationally led approaches. The study calls for more effective responses to make a reality of the aspirations of social work practitioners, many of whom are highly motivated to do better in meeting the needs of service users and more effectively building trust and confidence in the profession, thus working towards fulfilling the commitment to social justice.