Specialist Communication Skills for Social Workers

Abstract

The main driver for this new edition is the implementation of the Professional Capabilities Framework (PCF) in England (TCSW/BASW, 2012); an overarching professional standards framework which presents a new way of viewing the skills, values and knowledge that social workers bring to their practice at the different stages of their career.In pragmatic terms, this new framework reduced the relevance of the references to the National Occupational Standards at the end of each of the first edition chapters to Northern Ireland only.The Health and Care Professions Council in England (HCPC), the Northern Ireland Social Care Council, the Scottish Social Services Council (SSSC) and the Care Council for Wales operate the regulatory function for UK social work.These bodies set out threshold standards for what a social worker should know and have capability to do at the point of qualification.For example, the HCPC has produced a set of Standards of Proficiency for Social Work (HCPC, 2012) and also Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics (HCPC, 2016).The standards for social work are akin to those detailed in the Professional Capabilities Framework, and have been mapped to the PCF capability level for the end of final assessed placement (Qualifying Capability Level).This gives an educator confidence that a qualifying or qualified social worker who meets this capability level or above will equally meet the HCPC Standards of Proficiency (Williams and Rutter, 2013).In wider terms, the PCF contains a significant philosophical change to practice learning and professional development, setting out developmental pathways of expected capability -framed as 'capability statements'for all stages of a social worker's career, from the beginning entry to qualifying training to the most advanced social work practitioner.The emphasis is upon progressing a person's developmental capacity to engage in increasingly complex professional activity.Qualifying and qualified social workers aspire to each new stage of expected capability, the success of which is determined through a practice educator's professional judgement drawing upon different sources and types of evidence reflecting nine interdependent domains of professional capacity: Professionalism; Values The current emphasis within the professional development of social workers is to develop the qualities and capacity required to work with service user situations of increasing complexity, risk and uncertainty.This indicates that social workers must develop the capacity to communicate in a way so as to engage fully with the dynamics arising within those riskridden situations.

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