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Social workers

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In my work at a child development centre, I provide a social work perspective within a wider multi-disciplinary team which includes paediatricians, occupational therapists, psychologists and others. I try to concentrate on understanding the social relationships within the family, and between the family and others, and this helps the team to understand the family's context. In order to provide this service effectively, I keep up to date with developments in my profession and I do this through supervision, training and reading the professional press. For example, I use the Athens Table of Contents service for the British Journal of Social Work so that I can see which articles I might want to download and read. I am aware that NICE are due to publish some guidance on attachment, which I will download when it is published. I always try to get onto training courses relating to understanding social relations and I have therefore done some training about children's attachments – for example, Trauma and Attachment Outcomes in October 2013 and Assessments Using Attachment Theory in January 2013. I have discussed this learning in supervision and plan to share with colleagues. Once a fortnight, I attend a multi-disciplinary case discussion group where one person in the team presents a case for analysis and reflection by the group. I have presented a couple of times this year and have found the experience really helpful in helping me to consider some gaps and different perspectives on the case. My presentations have concentrated on attachments and I am working towards greater fluency in being able to identify attachment styles. I am not yet experienced enough to independently assess attachment styles but I work with my supervisor in these instances, deferring to her judgement when necessary. I use supervision to explore case work issues and other matters that arise in the course of my work. Recently I raised an issue about a colleague who had been very rude to a parent at the centre and my supervisor and I considered how to deal with this.

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