Save

Your current notes:

Email a copy to yourself

Thank you. The email has successfully been sent to your email address.

I'm sorry - there was an error in sending the email. Please try again below.

Cancel

Social workers

Critical reflection and Analysis

Apply critical reflection and analysis to inform and provide a rationale for professional decision-making.

Social workers are knowledgeable about and apply the principles of critical thinking and reasoned discernment. They identify, distinguish, evaluate and integrate multiple sources of knowledge and evidence. These include practice evidence, their own practice experience, and service user and carer experience, together with research-based, organisational, policy and legal knowledge. They use critical thinking augmented by creativity and curiosity.

Practitioners at this level should:

  • Routinely and efficiently apply critical reflection and analysis to increasingly complex cases.
  • Draw on a wide range of evidence sources to inform decision-making.
  • Ensure hypotheses and options are reviewed to inform judgement and decision-making.
  • Start to provide professional opinion.

Evidencing your capabilities:

The key elements of this domain are critical reflection, reasoned discernment and the use of multiple sources of information and knowledge. You might want to think of a case example where these three elements are present.

Your case notes, assessments and supervision records may well contain evidence of your critical reflection and analysis, particularly if you compare earlier records with more recent ones. Experiential learning is important and this, alongside discussions about professional development in supervision, is also relevant.

Read example