Reflexive Practice

Part of developing as a social work practitioner involves reflecting on practice experience and learning from whatever outcomes occur. Let’s assume there are no serious question marks over competency or fitness for practice and we are left with questions such as “how could I have acted differently to encourage that person in their situation to take control over their own life” and “could I have been more assertive to ensure that their needs are met in the way that is least restrictive” or even “how could I have introduced myself better”? I am constantly learning from my little mistakes so that next time I can be more effective as a practitioner.

And this involves reflection and intentional change on my part to foster a sort of self-critique rather than cruising through my professional life. By critique I mean noticing the positive alongside the negative, not simply noting what did/did not go well but thinking upon it and allowing it to inform the way I practice social work.  There are times when I am a cruiser; I admit it. Sometimes time is so stretched that I just don’t have the energy to reflect. But I try to. And when I do, the process will often bring to light an alternative course of action or simply an affirmation that I do a job that I (mostly) enjoy and that makes a difference to people’s lives. It also causes me to think about issues that I might skim over in the day-to-day fighting fires ‘I-just-don’t-have-time’ rush. For example, when I meet with the service user who can’t speak English I am usually thinking something like “it’s so inconvenient to work through an interpreter, how on earth do they expect me to be able to assess mental health if I can’t directly ask, this is taking twice as long”? When I reflect upon the same situation, I am more aware of the power difference between us and I realise that mental health problems in other cultures are often talked about (or not as the case may be) in different ways. I also realise that the fact that I forgot to take my shoes off was probably very rude and make a mental note to redouble efforts to remember next time (the service user did mention this before)!

So, I have decided to begin a blog to help me with my reflections and to post interesting social work related things and occasionally to have a good old moan. If you are interested, please comment and share your own experiences but make sure that no one can be identified. That would raise serious question marks! Thank for stopping by,

SW

Mental Health Social Worker