A Guide to Reflective Practice

a) What is reflective practice?

Reflective practice is the process of thinking about and critically analysing your actions with the goal of changing and improving occupational practice.

b) Why is reflective practice important?

Reflective practice is important because it accurately assesses the need of each service user. It is essential that all care workers become familiar with reflective practice as our profession depends on shared support, care workers.

c) How reflective practice contributes to improving the quality of service provision

Reflective practice contributes to improving the quality of service provision as the care sector constantly revises policies and procedures and new standards are constantly being set.

Care workers are to keep up to date on any revision of policies, procedures and standards to enable them to do their job to the quality expected of them.

d) How standards can be used to help a social care worker reflect on their practice

Standards help social care workers so they work in the same level as other social care workers or even their peers! It helps standardised the service they are giving.

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By having a standard, they can always reflect with it and achieve the same standardised level. You need to know the standards to understand what is expected of you as a health and social care worker, and then you should reflect to ensure you are meeting these standards, these would be the CQC ESQS and your code of practice which are found in the managers office and in each staff office.

All codes of practice should be adhered to at all times.

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

a) Why is it important for a social care worker to seek feedback on performance?

Feedback is important because:

* sets up target and the person knows what needs to be improved on gets the person motivated and focused on what needs to be achieved * helps to identify weaknesses and strengths in the person * express and stress what is important to the organisation and the job and hence what the person concerned should be prioritising * induces competition and challenge - a form of motivation * encourages a learning environment, as oppose to a win-lose performance environment - encourages initiatives and 'risk'/taking chances essential for growth * reduces uncertainty in the performer's mind - reduces stress and unnecessary energy loss, and increases motivation and confidence (performs even better)

* establish in the performer's mind what needs regular attention, and establish some sort of training that focuses on those areas through a routine, vs. what could be learnt and focus on something else * establishes a system of praise and constructive criticism - rewards and improvement; grows with the organisation * Seeking feedback is important because it gives a worker some idea of how they are working - what they are doing well and what could be improved. * Criticism alone makes the worker feel hopeless but constructive criticism provides information on how the worker can overcome problems and become a better worker - it gives them solutions and makes the situation less hopeless. * Good work deserves praise but it can allow the worker to become complacent. It should be given with information about how the worker can build on their successes.

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

Some people will react different to others depending on how the constructive feedback is given and received, I think it would depend on what type of person you are and what type of day you have had your manager should take this in to consideration before talking about constructive feedback. Some people would listen to what is being said take it on board and do something about it and understand everyone has weaknesses and they are not alone. Others may be upset at what is being said and take it to heart, they may become angry and feel let down by colleagues, manager. You should be able to feel you can talk to your manager about your feelings and be able to improve on your weaknesses.

c) Why is it important a for social care worker to use feedback to improve their practice

Because feedback informs you of the areas of your work that may need fine tuning/further training or a different approach and also what you are doing very well and have been praised for by a client or two for instance. It also gives you the opportunity to ask what to do with the feedback, where to gain training required and when, how to improve on certain skills etc. Everyone should be reflective, not just in their jobs but in life. Feedback provides a framework with which to be a reflective, this means recognising both the good and bad in their practice and using that knowledge to make it better in the future. Without that you remain stagnant, there is always room for improvement.