Unit 2

Engage in personal development in health, social care or children's and young people's setting.

Be able to reflect on practice

2.1– Explain the importance of reflective practice in continuously improving the quality of service provided.

Reflective practice is "the capacity to reflect on action so as to engage in a process of continuous learning", which, according to the originator of the term, is "one of the defining characteristics of professional practice".According to one definition it involves "paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to developmental insight".
Reflective practice can be an important tool in practice-based professional learning settings where individuals learning from their own professional experiences, rather than from formal teaching or knowledge transfer, may be the most important source of personal professional development and improvement. As such the nation has achieved wide take-up, particularly in professional development for practitioners in the areas of education and healthcare. The question of how best to learn from experience has wider relevance however, to any organizational learning environment.

2.3– Describe how own values, belief system and experiences may affect working practice.

It is true that a person's own beliefs and experiences could affect working practice or affect my role as a Support worker. However as a professional Support worker, it is part of my responsibility to treat all service users equally and never allow my personal beliefs affect my role. This is not acceptable in the healthcare practices and would be against the standard code of practice, and organisational policies. Take for an example giving preferential treatment to a service user because I like them more than others, treating a client differently because we have the same or different religion, different values as regards to personal hygiene, different sexual orientation. Further more, treating service users badly because in the past I have had bad experiences with perhaps people of such colour, race or people of his/her personalities is against the practice. The human acts rights 1998, The race relations act 1976 amended 2000, The sex discrimination act 1975, Equal opportunities act 2004 and the equality act of 2010 are all legislations that relate to equality and diversity in my own practice. These acts are about meeting and respecting the individuals needs of learners. As a support worker it is my responsibility to strictly adhere and follow these guidelines. This ensures that all clients are treated equally irrespective of their colour, age, disability, gender, religion and belief and sexual orientation. It is my duty to offer a non-judgemental, non-bias service because of individual client belief.

Be able to evaluate own performance

3.1-Evaluate own knowledge, performance, and understanding against relevant standards.

Once I have analysed the demands and expectations of my job role, the next step is to consider what I can already do and which areas I may further need to develop. This learning outcome looks at how I might evaluate my own performance and how I might use feedback to inform me. It is important to think about what I can do already and which areas I need to develop further. To do this I can ask for feedback from advisers or assessors.
I also need to find ways of evaluating myself. Responding to feedback one of the ways in which I can evaluate my current state of knowledge and performance is by asking others for feedback. This is important because it can be hard to be objective about your own performance. Also I may lack skills or knowledge to be aware of what else you should be doing or other ways in which I might work. Feedback may come from a variety of sources, including parent and colleagues as well as Directors etc. For this