Graduate Attribute 8 – Professional Development and Supervision
- Actively participate in professional supervision
- Engage in continuing professional development
- Where appropriate, to contribute to the professional development of others
Academic
My academic coursework has provided multiple examples of reflection, professional development and supervision, and highlighted the importance of these: fortunately, it has been a recurring theme throughout the Masters. Although strictly speaking tutorials and seminars are not “professional supervision”, the elements of supervision are there, including: reflective practice, support, accountability, managing boundaries, ethics. I consider that I actively engaged in activities similar to professional supervision within my coursework, and also contributed to the professional development of others: clear and honest discussions about practice; critical reflection on frameworks and values; and critical reflection on my attitudes and behaviour to develop and improve my social-work practice.
Field Education
Supervision in the community-mental-health team was welcomed and was vital to me completing my second field placement. During my first placement the field educator provided good quality ad-hoc supervision (de-briefing and discussion), but unfortunately did not provide any planned, structured professional supervision, and the university was aware of this. (I have since learnt that this semester the university provided professional supervision for the students completing their practicum at this high school.) For this reason, I valued enormously the planned and structured professional supervision from my field educator at the community-mental-health, which complemented the high-level ad-hoc supervision she provided at other times. There were multiple professional development opportunities within community mental health at the organisation where I did my final practicum. I was able to complete numerous practical courses and workshops, and more importantly, there is a culture within the organisation of continuous improvement that makes it easy to create opportunities to respond to my commitment to continuing career learning. Throughout both practicums, I tried to synthesise professional development into my emerging practice framework, and to make myself vulnerable in supervision to have tough conversations about self-care and burnout; blind spots; vicarious trauma; and practical matters such as consent, capacity and therapeutic interventions. This provided me with the opportunity to critically reflect on and to explore a number of areas of my practice that I saw as needing improvement, and provided me with opportunities to be positive about my strengths that I was not always able to see on my own. I have reflected on these conversations with my field educator outside of our supervision sessions, and I believe that this has allowed for incremental changes to my social-work practice, making me a better social worker.
Personal
In all of my many roles over the years I have tried to continuously improve how I do things. Reflection is the principle element of my framework of practice, and has been since I first articulated my framework at the beginning of the social-work masters; it feels like reflection has been the principle element of my life, without my even realising. I have always had a thirst for knowledge and to do better and to be better. When I was a young boy I wanted to be a scientist when I grew up because I was curious and wanted to learn about the world around me. When I was a young man I wanted to be a priest because I believed then that with my interpersonal skills and my faith, I could help others to be better. After becoming an atheist, I wanted to be a teacher – again so that I could help others to be better and to help others learn about the world around them. And finally I wanted to be a social worker, to help people to live better lives and to help bring about productive change in society so that people’s lives can be better. This feels like a natural process, and even the process of writing this reflection is bringing clarity to the organic development of my career and roles. I am a follower of Stoic philosophy. There is a word in Greek philosophy – prokopton – that I believe sums up my approach to Stoicism and to my life. Superficially it means something like follower or disciple, but it has greater depth, and refers to someone who is trying to follow philosophy in order to live more excellently. That’s me. I am a work in progress.