Working on your CPD | Using our audio interviews and free chapters as easy discussion starters
Continuing professional development (CPD) is a term for the reflection and learning activities that social workers do throughout their career. CPD should maintain and improve a social worker’s practice. Recording CPD is a way for social workers to demonstrate their skills and knowledge. It is also a requirement of being a registered social worker with Social Work England.
We know how hard-pressed many agencies and social workers are these days – short on both money and time. Given this, CoramBAAF provides free content to support professional development and reflection. Materials from our Publications team include our Editor’s Exclusive (where we provide free access to a chapter from a different book every month), alongside a selection of interviews with our authors.
Both the chapters and the interviews are just the right length to give you an initial feel for a subject as well as some useful pointers about its importance to social work, without being too time consuming. They are easy discussion starters in team meetings, where you can then talk in greater depth about how the material may affect day-to-day practice. Social workers also report adding links to these resources to their foster carer newsletters, making them aware of particular topics and helping them keep up to date. Importantly, listening to/reading this material and discussing it counts towards your CPD, and could be part of a foster carer’s personal development plan (PDP).
We also produce a popular podcast series called CoramBAAF Conversations that includes episodes that cover articles from Adoption & Fostering, our quarterly journal. Dr Dennis Golm (Editor in Chief) and Vicky Walker (Production Editor) discuss the content for each new issue, with additional interviews with the authors of particularly interesting articles, keeping you up to date with cutting edge practice and research from the UK and globally. Why not use the podcasts as discussion starters at your team meetings? The latest episode explores an article on managing allegations and complaints in foster care.
Explore the full range of free content from our Publications team in the bookshop section of our website!
Jo Francis, Publications Manager, CoramBAAF.