502/SCH52

1.1 Continually improving practice and knowledge is important in my job role as legislation and guidelines for good practice are continually changing and being improved for good practice. I need to be aware of current health and social care standards and by learning new skills and refreshing training I am able to do this. Personal development improves my practice to benefit myself, the organization I work for and the service users who receive care. Training allows us to be updated on all recommendations to achieve good standards and ensure a good standard is met.
1.2 Potential barriers to professional development in my job role are lack of funding from the company to develop through training, as a company they are training staff to be trainers to train others within the care setting as our yearly updates and new starters. This I think is a barrier as in care setting there is a high turn over of staff and so you could train someone who may not be there for very long and have to train again and then staff may not take in what is being said, as carers training others there is no understanding of learning styles and how we all learn differently. Yearly training also causes another barrier as within the different learning styles we all learn differently and some care staff may not find it effective to learn through visual style. Another potential barrier is not feeling supported to develop yourself and being given positive feedback on how to progress, although being given regular supervisions some staff feels a lack of support to develop them. Although NVQ’s are to be done through on job training due to the high demand of work when on a shift, most staff have to come in on days off to complete work and get paid extra rather than within normal working shift. There is also the risk of giving training and staff leaving having gained training certificates. As care work is a low paid job, some staff has poor literacy and often a lot of foreign workers with language barrier both spoken and written making professional development harder to achieve as the company rarely supports those to develop effectively.
1.3 Inductions provide basic knowledge and skills needed to do your job and help get used to working role, within the care setting without this you wouldn’t know how you should be working. Appraisals and development plans keep skills and knowledge up to date by highlighting is of improvement and by planning and setting goals it is set out to be achievable. Direct observations can be a good tool to observe from a distance and then review with the person and look at the practices they use from different perspectives.
1.4 When keeping knowledge and practice up to date