Unit HSC23 DEVELOP YOUR KNOWLEDGE AND PRACTICE

This unit encourages you to look at your own strengths and limitations so that you can
develop and look at your skills further.

This unit is about:

o How to recognise your own skills
o The importance of receiving and acting upon feedback
o How to plan and undertake your own development
o The opportunities for learning in and outside the workplace
o Methods of keeping up-to-date with changes in care practice.

As part of Element HSC23b, you will be required to plan and review your progress and
development. You will be supported and advised on setting measurable goals. In other
words, you must be able to recognise when you have reached the level of competence
you have planned for.

There are a number of sources that inform us of our level of competence:

o Feedback from colleagues
o Feedback from assessors
o Supervision session/appraisals
o Formal qualifications
o Self-evaluation

Expectations:

Your supervisor/manager, colleagues, service users, relatives of service users, and

others have expectations about your skills and the standards of your work. You may
be able to find out the standards that are expected of you using the following
sources:

o Policies and procedures

o Job description
o Training activities
o Appraisal and supervision

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Feedback on your performance is important and can be offered in several ways.

• Supervision is the most common method of getting feedback about your

performance. You are required to have six formal supervision from your
manager/supervisor each year. These sessions should provide you with regular
opportunities to meet with your supervisor in confidence.

• An appraisal is a more formal review meeting between you and your supervisor.
They are held twice a year and is more thorough than supervision sessions.

• Staff meetings: you may also receive more general feedback during staff
meetings, when methods of working are discussed and staff are informed of any
necessary changes. This is usually an opportunity to offer your views and
suggestions as to care practice.

• Your NVQ assessor will also provide you with feedback both relating to your
written work and observations. This is usually supportive and helps the learning
process.

Values and Beliefs

All people have their own values and beliefs and this is what makes people different
from one another. You have to make sure that yours do not affect the way you work
with people.

For example, you might disapprove of smoking, and this belief could lead you not to
respect other’s rights to do so. You know it is important to protect everyone’s health,
and to make sure that their smoking does not affect others; however, you should not
allow judgement you make about people’s lifestyle affect the way you relate to them.

Some of the beliefs we hold are influenced by various factors:

a) Upbringing: our earliest influences are those we experience from our families in
our formative years. They are often very strong and form part of out culture.

b) Religion: religious beliefs and practices have a bearing on our moral values such
as our views on life and death and determining right from wrong.

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 c) Culture: beliefs and traditions differ between cultures such as the role of
women or marriage.

d) Life experiences: some experiences have a lasting effect on the way we view
different people. For example, people who have been affected by a family
member’s alcohol or substance abuse may have strong feelings about the topic.

e) Education: achieving qualifications often opens the doors for people and gives
them the confidence. Likewise, those who, for whatever reason, were not able to
achieve their potential may Lack confidence in their own abilities.

These are a few factors that help to shape our views and beliefs throughout life.
They may change according to different life stages and experiences, but as a care
worker, it is important to respect the views of others whether or not you agree with
them.

Personal and professional development

It is important to plan how you are going to improve yourself. Without planning, it is
difficult to achieve targets. These is a saying ‘Failure to plan is planning to fail’. You
will gain nothing from self evaluation if you do not act upon it.

Having identified the areas you need to develop, you need to plan the steps to take to
achieve this. You also need to identify exactly what it is you want to achieve. These
are your goals or objectives.

For example you identify that you want to develop a new skill that is relevant to your
work area: this could be using specialised equipment or machinery. In this case, you
should first identify what it is you want to achieve, and then identify how you will go
about it. You will need to discuss it with your supervisor, who might suggest you
observe someone else who is experienced, or attend training if necessary. The next
stage could be to use the equipment under supervision until you and the supervisor
are confident that you are competent carrying out this task.

Planning your development:

Having identified your strengths and limitations, you will need to look at your training
needs. You will use this information to produce your individual action plan for your
assessment, and will have an opportunity to investigate sources of training later on.

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Individual action plans

Your supervisor will support you in completing action plans during the
supervision/appraisal process. You will also complete action and assessment plan with
your assessor. These plans will help you approach your NVQ step by step and pace
yourself so that everything is not left until the last minute.

The following are some of the courses you may have attended or that may be
available to you:

Dementia awareness Basic Food Hygiene

Basic first Aid Working safely
Moving and handling Infection Control
Fire prevention

Legislative requirements for training and development include those covered by:

o Care Standards Act 2000

o Health and Safety at Work Act 1974
o Manual Handling Operations Regulations 1992
o Control of Substance Hazardous to health (COSHH) Regulations 1992
o Food Safety Act 1990
o Fire Precautions (Workplace) Regulations 1997

Under the Health and Safety at Work Act, all staff must have training in Basic Food
Hygiene, Health and Safety, Manual Handling and First Aid (as appropriate to their
job role). However, under the Care Standards Act, new forms of training for care
staff are now mandatory. These are:

o Induction training (for all new staff, to be completed within the first six
weeks)
o Foundation training (for all new staff to be completed within the first sixx
months)
o NVQ Level 2 in Health and Social Care (to be started within the first six
months

Taking responsibility for your personal development:

There are many sources of information that you can use to obtain information on
the range of learning and training opportunities that are available. Senior staff in

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 your workplace will support you with this but you can also find out about
opportunities that meet your needs.

Below are examples of where you can find information about your training needs:

Source Information provided

Colleges or training providers Prospectus including programme details, times, dates and
venues
Library Details of colleges adult education centres, etc.
Careers office Training schemes available locally and nationally.
Requirement for different careers
Colleagues/family/friends Details of programmes they have been on or heard about.
Staff development Details of in-house programmes and externally run
programmes which your employer may support.
Connexions Details of apprenticeship schemes and routes for
different careers

Learning from experience

As well as training, much of your competence is gained ‘on the job’. You learn while you
are doing a job and to some extent by trial and error. This does not mean that you
need to make mistakes in order to learn anything, but you look back at work
experiences to consider how it could be improved in the future.

Why and how do you do this?

So that:
I can learn from mistakes
I can avoid similar mistakes in the future
I can think about what I do at work
I can learn from experience
I can learn from others
I can recognise my strengths and limitations
I can help identify development needs
I can observe examples of good practice
I can review my progress
I can identify how to improve particular aspects of my work
I can identify new skills I need to gain
I can keep up-to-date
I can receive feedback from others
I can prepare myself for potentially difficult situations
I can gain self awareness

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What sort of situations can you learn from?

Difficult situations you have handled (successfully or otherwise)

Achievements you are pleases with
Positive feedback given to you
Good learning experiences (positive or otherwise)
Learning from others
Examples of good practice
New skills gained
New experiences

In addition to formal programmes of training and development, it is important to

remember the staff development that takes place on a day to day basis, as you are
constantly learning.

You can learn from:

o Observing others
o Discussion
o Reading
o Web sites
o Formal training sessions
o Mentoring
o Informal training opportunities – for example, a member of staff may
demonstrate a procedure that is new to you

Keeping up to date

In an ever changing work environment such as a care setting, you need to be aware
and confident that your knowledge and skills are current.

There are constant changes that affect care workers, especially the following:

o Changes in legislations and policy (eg. hanges in the law)

o New equipment or machinery
o Advances in health care (eg, new techniques)
o Information technology

You are expected to keep up with the changes and your organisation should support
you to do this. However, you need to be proactive and put yourself forward for staff

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development events. These include the regular updates for Fire Safety, Basic Food
Hygiene, Moving and Handling, etc.

Putting new skills into practice

Once you have attended training and developed new skills, your next step is to put
this into practice. You will have to show how you use the knowledge you have gained in
your work. At first, you will be supervised by more experienced staff who could give
you feedback on your progress. Try to identify how this learning makes a difference
to the standard of your work.

As you learn more about yourself and your work role, you become more aware of your
training and development needs. It is essential to plan and ensure that you take up
opportunities to develop yourself. Make sure that you feel confident enough to carry
out new skills without putting health and safety at risk.

You will need to continue to measure your progress. This then allows you to set
yourself new goals and also provides encouragement. It will also enable you to
evaluate the effectiveness of your plan and help you to identify if you need to make
any changes.

SUMMARY OF KEY POINTS:

 How to identify your strengths and limitations

 Sources of feedback
 The importance of being aware of own personal values and beliefs and how
these could potentially affect your work
 The importance of planning and reviewing your own progress
 The various development opportunities that are open to you
 Keeping up to date with changes that affect your work
 How to apply your learning to practice

Notes extracted from NETWORK TRAINING PUBLISHING 2005