Chapter 73 – Paul Creaven (D5SOP12)

Professional Skills

Professional skills in any job or career are the skills that you, as an individual, bring to your practice. These skills include communication, adaptability, empathy, being non-judgemental, advocating, showing initiative, being a team player, self-care and self-reflection. While not explicitly presented as a module in some colleges, these skills are more evident to a student during college placement. If these skills were not obvious to the student on placement, this is where the responsibility of a supervisor comes in (Rochford 2007).

As well as exploring skills, this chapter introduces traits, which are more personal and involve the nature of the work. We are, as professionals within services, part of an individual’s world, their life, goals and ambitions. The first professional skill this chapter focuses on is communication.

Communication

One of the most vital professional skills a social care worker can possess is the ability to communicate, whether with a service user, their support network, or when you are speaking on their behalf to your team. If a practitioner is not a good communicator, either a listener or speaker, the majority of other professional, practical and technical skills can become redundant. A good communicator in the field will be able to actively listen to a service user or group, adapt their own communication (tone of voice, how fast they speak, words they use to describe something) to suit the needs of a service user or group; they may even demonstrate negotiation skills (Shannon 1948). While the first two parts of this skill will be required every day in your role as a social care worker, the skill of negotiation will be required only every now and then; perhaps to convince a service user to come into a day service or even to support an individual in residential care in getting out of bed in the morning. Communication is vital in supporting the service user in making informed decisions in their lives and it is central to our practice.

An example of adapting communication to suit the needs of a service user includes supporting an individual with difficulty in verbal communication. This may require having a pen or paper with you when talking to the individual, having pictures of general items, or even changing the environment you are in to suit their needs.

Empathy and being non-judgemental

Being able to communicate in a positive manner will enable a social care worker to develop empathy for a service user. Empathy is the ability to understand how someone feels (Statham 2007). With empathy, a practitioner in the field can support a service user through difficulties in their lives. In order for a social care worker to be able to develop empathy while supporting a service user, it is important to remain non-judgemental. There may be periods in our career when a service user’s belief system or actions go against our own attitudes and values. It is extremely important that this is recognised by the practitioner; however, we must not let that cloud our own judgement while we provide support.

The difference between sympathy and empathy can be explained in the following example. If somebody is affected by an acquired brain injury, it may prevent them from working, driving or socialising. Showing sympathy is feeling sorry for the individual. Empathy is understanding the hurt felt by the loss of independence, understanding the grief somebody may feel by not being able to drive their children to events any more or relying on people to bring them to appointments. Being non- judgemental could be understanding the individual and their hurt, responding appropriately if there is a change of personality or decision-making due to the acquired brain injury, rather than directly pointing out the inappropriate behaviours that may be demonstrated. It is about separating our personal values and norms from our work and focusing on supporting the individual.

Advocacy, initiative and being a team player

With an understanding of how a service user (or group within a service) feels, a social care worker can become an efficient advocator on their behalf if required. To advocate for someone is to support them with their needs within a service or externally within the community. To advocate for an individual or a group, a practitioner must first understand their need and how advocating can overcome it. The social care worker needs to ask questions such as to whom and how they should advocate (Inclusion Ireland 2020).

The most common example is supporting an individual in being accepted for Disability Allowance after an appeal. The process for the worker involves supporting the service user and their family; explaining what happened and the process that must now be followed; getting in contact with relevant external agencies; and even speaking on the day of the appeal. Group situations might involve supporting a group of service users in getting a bus stop closer to a day service or even advocating for a set-down area outside a day service. The impact these supports have on a service user (or their family) can be enormous. Quality of life, feeling safe and feeling listened to are just a few things that a service user may feel when someone listens and advocates for them.

It will quickly become apparent to a social care worker, no matter how much they use their own initiative while supporting a service user, that being able to engage in a team has a great impact on the quality of service a service user receives. Some of the work requires a multi-disciplinary approach, whether that is internally within a service or externally with social, community or medical agencies. When you work in a team, knowing who you are in it, the goal and responsibility you have for achieving that goal is vital.

A team working together within a service for the benefit of a service user might include the service user’s key worker relaying information to other staff about the service user’s person-centred plan or support plan. In a day service this may present itself in information being passed to other staff members. For example, the type of medication the service user is on or the risk assessment of a service user being updated and staff informed. A person-centred example is all staff members supporting a service user, not just the key worker involved in the service user’s goals. Group facilitators and one-to-one support all support the service user in achieving their goals. Working productively in a team could open many opportunities to a service user that may not have been possible if they were only working with one social care worker. While we are working with the lives of vulnerable children or adults, we must acknowledge that we sometimes do not have the appropriate skill set or tools to support someone with a specific need. A multi-disciplinary approach to social care work enables the service user to access a variety of professionals, where appropriate; mental health (counselling, psychology), specialised rehabilitative support (speech and language, occupational therapy), employment support (job coaches, guidance counsellors) and professionals to support physical health, from the doctor to the personal trainer.

Your role as a social care worker could be to sit down with specialists and the service user and then you all come together to create an action plan that allows the service user to make use of the skill set of external agencies. When advocating we are expressing the wishes of service users and supporting their right to choice. This is achieved by also ensuring that the service user is aware of and understands the information that they are receiving, whether oral or written.

Adaptability

As a social care worker, your role is about guidance, support and assistance. In a single day, a practitioner’s role in one day could involve supporting the same individual with their personal needs, facilitating their workshop and then being the person they want to talk to because of the argument they had with a family member at the weekend. A social care worker may play a number of characters on the same day for the same person. Indirectly, you may also be speaking on behalf of a service user, receiving information on behalf of a service user or supporting a service user with referrals for health or welfare services.

A normal day for a social care worker may require them to change their approach with various individuals – service users, family members, other social care workers or professionals in other services. These changes could involve different uses of language or different types of support provided to a service user.

Self-care and self-reflection

All the roles, attributes and styles that social care workers possess, however, mean that self-care is such an important skill. Without it, a social care worker cannot protect themselves from the traumatic lives of service users. If they cannot support themselves, they will be unable to support a service user. Self-care for a practitioner involves being reflective, observing the worlds of service users, understanding if these worlds are going to impact on you personally and, most important of all, knowing your limits. Social care workers need to know when to switch off and, when they do clock off, to know how to look after themselves. It is a professional skill that can reap benefits for the practitioner, the service and, most important of all, the service user. It is an attribute that is personally and professionally an enormous asset to a social care worker, but it can be one of the most neglected. This is, ironically, due to our desire to help and support those who are entrusted to us as professionals in our own field.

Self-care from a work point of view is not being overworked and having appropriate supervision. Personally, it is all about what makes the social care worker step safely from the worlds of service users and into their own personal lives. It could be exercise, hobbies, keeping a journal or even having a check-in with a counsellor or supervisor external to work.

Practical Skills

Report writing, IT skills and induction

An organisation may have policies or procedures that then determine how they approach report writing, how service or goal plans are put together and how risk assessments are compiled.

Being IT efficient in a social care environment means being competent with emails, using applications such as Word and PowerPoint and whatever IT system an organisation uses to store service user information or statistics. This can even extend to being an administrator for an organisation’s website or social media accounts.

The service type may then determine if the ability to work in groups, one-to-one, in a training environment, in the community or within a home is appropriate. Is the goal of the service to support with community skills or independent living? Is it to support with developing vocational skills for work or rehabilitative skills to enable someone to cook and clean for themselves? The advantage of being able to describe what type of service an organisation provides is that it enables an organisation to state the type of professional they are looking for and to develop a training programme for staff that suits the service. For example, if a staff member is expected to run groups, training on workshops can be provided; residential staff may have training on supporting service users with taking their medication.

Formal training

Leading on from that, funders may have expectations about the type of formal training social care staff have when supporting service users within a service. Staff working on vocational programmes may need formal training in providing group training to service users. Formal training can also include manual handling, first aid, children first and safeguarding.

Knowledge of service users and being on the front line

Last but not least, the profile of service users who the service is geared towards must be taken into account. Then, a service needs to ask if it is the appropriate service for those needs and what skills are needed to ensure that a service user is safe. The practical skill set for physical needs may be support for eating, for personal needs such as toileting, or even something as simple as assisting someone to close their jacket. Knowledge on the service users profiled for a service is important. A service could, for example, be for individuals diagnosed with an acquired brain injury or an intellectual disability. A social care worker is not expected to be an expert on a diagnosis, but they should at the very least know how the symptoms of a diagnosis may have an impact on someone. Take an acquired brain injury, for example: a social care worker is not expected to know the brain like an expert in neurology; but the should at the very least understand the possibility of memory difficulties and the affect on cognitive processing, and the impact such an injury can have personally on someone. A social care worker needs to have the skill of researching these impacts and how they might affect someone’s life.

The nature of social care and the services that are associated with the profession, being on the frontline can mean very different things to each individual social care worker. Within a vocational service it could mean providing support on IT or literacy skills. For a day service it might mean providing therapeutic groups and facilitating art groups, music groups and meditation groups. In a residential setting it could involve supporting a service user with personal skills such as washing, making breakfast and grocery shopping. For this author, while working in a training centre supporting individuals diagnosed with acquired brain injuries and strokes, front line meant supporting one-to-one in the community, facilitating brain injury education groups, maths groups and IT skills, and also facilitating walking soccer groups, mini tournaments for table tennis and even supporting an external facilitator for yoga. Supervising lunch breaks and providing support for personal needs can also be added to this list. It may be difficult to believe, but all this happened in one training centre for one staff member. This does not include the different responsibilities of other staff members.

Technical Skills

Technical skills involve putting professional and practical skills together, resulting in a service that is directly linked to a service user. Whether it is positive or negative depends on the ability of the social care worker. Technical skills include putting together an appropriate risk assessment, positive risk assessment, support plan, person-centred plan and service review, and compiling session notes. While a social care worker gets training in this from their service and is aware of these concepts though academic learning, in practice it is now about the ability of the social care worker in using their own professional skills, the appropriate practical skills and tying them both together.

As mentioned at the start of this chapter, without being skilled in communication, it will be very hard for a social care worker to interact with a service user in a way that allows the successful implementation of these technical skills. Unfortunately, this skill set may at times involve the social care worker having to give a service user bad news. This could be due to a risk assessment or limited resources within a service or the community not allowing the completion of a goal in a person-centred plan; or having to record or write up session notes after a challenging incident with the service user.

While we do not like giving bad news to anybody, either personally or professionally, it is important that service users are informed, that they understand what is being said and that it is done in a non-judgmental environment.

Risk assessment

A risk assessment is about the social care worker assessing the needs of an individual or group, identifying the risks, understanding the severity of the risk and then identifying ways to reduce that risk. It must be understood that nobody expects a staff member to get rid of every possible risk – that would nearly stop a service from even happening! It is about figuring out risks, and preventing or minimising them. This applies as much to staff as it does to service users. It must be understood as well that it is not about stopping a service or activity. This is all about the skill the staff member has in creating a safe environment (as much as is reasonable) to allow something to proceed. For example, if there is a group activity out in the community for a day service and part of the plan is to walk to the activity, a risk assessment is completed for the group and individually. If there is a service user who has balance or co-ordination difficulties and issues with their peripheral vision, it does not automatically exclude them from the activity. A service can put a plan together that would allow that service user to have one-to-one support. The risk assessment would also look at the staff member/volunteer/student on placement supporting the individual by directing them away from the edge of a path on a main road or, if that is not possible, staying on the side that is most at risk of causing a fall/serious injury. Risk assessments need to be viewed as instruments that allow us to put in place procedures, where possible, to allow an individual the same chance as everyone else, not as something that restricts the chances someone has to participate. It needs to be accepted, though, that occasionally a risk assessment will show that an activity cannot happen because the risk and likelihood of injury to the service user and/or staff members is too high.

Positive risk assessment

While the risk assessment takes a health and safety point of view, a positive risk assessment assesses the risks associated with the goals a service user may have and using the positives of that goal as a measure. This is a skill usually used when discussing goals with a service user’s family members. They may be quite anxious about something going wrong with the goal. The aim of the social care worker is to ease those anxieties and prevent them having an impact on the service user. A perfect example of this is if a service user wanted to get gym membership or take part in an exercise group in the community. One of the most common fears family members have is that their son/ daughter/brother/sister may get injured. The appropriate approach is to acknowledge that there is a chance that could happen but to point out that getting injured is the same for everybody who does this activity. The positive part of this assessment is to then point out the benefits, for example exercising, community participation and social interaction. The social care worker needs to show that the positives outweigh the negatives.

Support plan

Both these risk assessments will pull information from a support plan (which may have a different name, depending on the organisation). A support plan identifies the needs of the individual, which are then acted on to enable them to participate in a service. Again, this is not about the social care worker pointing out limitations to stop a service user participating in activities. It is about the social care worker putting things in place to make participation possible. This is part health and safety, part guide. The service user is also aware of the support plan. It is important that a key worker asks a service user what they feel should be on the support plan or let them know the reasons why something goes on it. A support plan may look at physical, mental, emotional, cognitive, living skills and social needs. This all depends on the type of service. The support plan is vital, as it complements the person-centred plan that a service user has within a service.

Person-centred plan and service review

The person-centred plan (PCP) for a service user is the plan that directs an individual’s service. A technically astute social care worker can support a service user in identifying goals they would like to achieve, ensure they are realistic for the service user, specify to the service user the steps involved in achieving the goal and support them in creating realistic deadlines for goals. A social care worker also needs to be able to come up with contingencies if steps need to be adjusted. One of the most important skills a social care worker can possess when supporting a service user, when putting together a PCP, is the ability to look long term at how goals can progress and benefit a service user. One example might be the benefits of upskilling on a computer. From a goal of being able to turn on a computer, a service user’s PCP around technology could lead to using emails, online shopping, online learning and completing a part-time or full-time course. From those goals comes the added achievements of a new way to communicate, educational success, the opportunity to be part of a new community in a college, to potentially achieving a level of employment. A social care worker needs to be able to tie all this together while respecting the service user and the goals they would like to achieve. All of the above would then be transcribed into a service review: goals achieved; why certain goals were not achieved; and contingency plans that were put in place. This is completed, of course, with the input of the service review.

Session notes

Communication with the service user is transcribed into session notes. It is important for the social care worker to be objective but also empathic when writing session notes. While understanding the need to be factual, a social care worker must also make sure that they do not use personalised language or write their own views in session notes. A good exercise for a social care worker is to imagine that you are the individual the notes were being written about – how would you feel? Service users have a right to access their personal files, which include session notes. Session notes may also be required for legal reasons.

Good professional practice when writing session notes is to write objectively about the events of a meeting or session; notes should not read like the opinion of the social care worker. For example, writing in session notes that a service user cried when told something is appropriate; however, a social care worker cannot write that the service user got upset because the word ‘upset’ can mean any number of things.

Professional, Practical and Technical Skills Combined

Professional, Practical and Technical Skills in use

A blend of all three skills is required for the development of a service user’s service in a social care setting. With that being said, communication is paramount for all three to work together. This applies to how a social care worker communicates within the field and how they take in any interactions.

In order for a social care worker to stay focused, reflection and awareness are vital components in the social care toolkit. Without them, the skills a social care worker has acquired or naturally refined may become dull and in the long term possibly result in apathy and even burnout.

One of the most important things for a social care worker to realise is that there is no such thing as a perfect social care worker. This is not a criticism of professionals in the field, but an acknowledgement that social care is such a personalised field. There will be times we cannot bring our best selves to work, but it is how we respond that counts. We also need to understand that if we are working in a service that may have as many as fifty service users, we cannot be everything for everyone all the time, despite our best efforts.

Above all, we need to accept that the environment we work in can be quite fluid, due to policy changes, new research on best practice, and legislation. It is our ability to adapt to these changes while ensuring the safety and quality of service to service users that enables social care workers to support individuals, groups and their goals.

References

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Inclusion Ireland (2020) Advocacy <http://www.inclusionireland.ie/advocacy> [accessed 11 January 2020].

Rochford, G. (2007) ‘Theory, Concepts, Feelings and Practice: The Contemplation of Bereavement within a Social Work Course’ in J. Lishman, Handbook for Practice Learning in Social Work and Social Care: Knowledge and Theory (2nd edn). London: Jessica Kingsley, pp. 235-48.

Shannon, C. E. (1948) ‘A mathematical theory of communication’, Bell System Technical Journal 27 (July, October), 379-423, 623-56. Available at <http://www.math.harvard.edu/~ctm/home/text/ others/shannon/entropy/entropy.pdf> [accessed 12 January 2020].

Statham, D. (2007) ‘Models of Assessment’ in J. Lishman, Handbook for Practice Learning in Social Work and Social Care: Knowledge and Theory (2nd edn). London: Jessica Kingsley, pp. 101-14.

Tusla (2020) What is Children First? <https://www.tusla.ie/services/child-protection-welfare/children- first/> [accessed 11 January 2020].