It is my duty to help all those I support to always achieve the best possible outcome each and every day, my duties lie with those I support, including and by no means limited to, administering medication in accordance with the guidelines given by GP, helping individuals choose their daily activities and helping them to take part in them, supporting individuals to make friends to avoid the feeling of loneliness, cooking meals with those I support to promote independence and empowerment, planning the care they wish to receive allowing them the chance to be involved to ensure I’m working in a person centred way.
It is my responsibility to get to know those I support to be able to also gain further help where needed if its outside what I am capable of doing, for example I notice a client is poorly, I’m unable to help but can seek the relevant medical attention. Its my duty to also train new staff so they are able to fulfil all needs as mentioned above to a high standard.
As part of my role I expect myself to conduct myself in a professional yet caring way so all around me feel able to approach me for help when needed, I expect myself to have all relevant knowledge of policies and procedures to offer advice or guidance where needed or at least know where to look should I not know an answer. When supporting individuals id expect myself to go above and beyond with the care I provide, not only to ensure those I support feel well cared for but as to be a role model for staff I am training. I must be thorough when checking houses for health and safety issues, checking that all records are up to date/updating where required. I am expected to be completely honest within my role, monitoring for any bad practice then reporting (whistleblowing) and or training further where required. Knowledge is important, so my training is often renewed in order to ensure my knowledge remains factual and relevant to my role.
Working well with others means being able to work effectively as part of a team, be that with co-workers, managements, families or health professionals. Communicating well with all parties is vital, listening to what others have to say, being able to respect what others say and valuing their opinions and keeping an open mind being able to listen to and implement new ideas. Working well as a team will help to ensure everyone is working to the same policies and procedures and will also allow you to be able to learn from one another which in turn will help to build strong positive working relationships and ultimately, trust.
Be Able to Reflect on Practice
If we do not constantly reflect on our own practice we leave room to make errors, not reflecting on how we currently work and what we know we would not know whether or not our current practices are meeting up to date standards set. Reflection is not only about the service as a whole but our own ways of working, when we reflect on how we work we are able to analyse how we are performing, finding areas we can continually improve on such as knowledge or skills.
Reflective practice can be used to improve your own ways of working but also the service that is provided in general. If everyone within a service reflects on their ways of working then insights can be shared on what has gone well or maybe not so well then as a team we are able to work together to change the service and continually improve for the better. If everyone works on self reflection and is able to improve their work then an entire service provision would improve.
Every individual has their own way of thinking, we all have our own beliefs, opinions and values, all of which can make us act different around people and may lead to conflict. No matter how we may feel about others and their opinions/views in order to prevent poor ways in working we must respect what others have to say and their right to think and believe what they do.
Be Able to Evaluate Own Performance
Once I have analysed my own demands and expectations of my work role I would then need to look at what I already do within my role and try to consider ways I may need to look into further in order to be able to develop further. It can be very difficult to look at your own work in an objective way or a way that does not appear to be too self critical. So in order to evaluate my own performance and get better at what I do it is important that I always ask others for feedback. This would generally come from my managers or any learning assessors I may have. This would highlight my strong points and my not so strong points so that I may improve on a professional level.
Be able to agree a personal development plan. Within my role the following tools can be used to plan or review my own development:
- Supervisions
- Appraisals
- Observations
- Regular training
- Professional discussions
- Self reflective practices
Reviewing my own learning needs and development opportunities at my level would involve me sitting down with my manager/care manager to be able to discuss areas in which I am working where there may be areas for improvement. They would hold any and all information relating to any professional development/training that would be available to me, whether that be mandatory training or optional. This would then involve me sitting down and agreeing to training needs in order to commit to the requirements needed to complete all training set. This would generally be discussed and agreed upon during my supervision where I am asked if there is any training that I would like to do.
Be able to use learning opportunities and reflective practice to contribute to personal development. Since joining the company over a year ago I have undergone numerous in house training, including the care certificate, first aid, person centred care planning, autism awareness along with starting my Level three in health and social care, although other than the health and social care qualification I have completed all other training offered numerous times, I believe it vital to always keep current knowledge refreshed and be aware of possible changes to legislation and current procedures etc. All training can prevent an individual from becoming complacent in their own role and can open your eyes and allow reflection on what you are currently doing and see if there is any way you can do things better.
Reflecting on my own work is constantly allowing me to improve the way in which I work, as part of my working role it is important for me to act as a role model for support workers. In reflecting on my work constantly I am able to alter the ways in which I deal with various situations not only for myself but for others, for example, I have dealt with challenging behaviour, I believe that if I approach all situations in the correct manner there should be no need for challenging behaviour to manifest in anyone I support, so reflecting upon this, I would look at what happened leading up to an episode of challenging behaviour, what happened during and how things continued afterwards, using reflection techniques I should be able to understand what went wrong and either alter my way of thinking or the way I would approach a similar situation in order to prevent recurrence.
Continuing professional development is vital, constantly striving to make yourself better professionally ensures you will remain competent within your own role, it will help to keep a service running safely and proficiently.
In order to record your own progress in relation to development you would generally draw up a personal development plan with your manager, which to keep you developing would need reviewing regularly to ensure you are always on track with goals and are able to monitor progress and highlight further areas for improvement.
