Outcomes of Further Education: Social Workers' Assessments on Improved Professional Competences in Follow-up Work with Long Term Users through Participating in a Skill Training Program
Background and purpose
In Norway an extensive organisational welfare reform; the NAV reform was enacted in 2006. The aim was to streamline and improve Norway’s welfare services based on a “one-stop-shop” principle: Social welfare, social security and employment services were integrated into a joint unit. Alongside the reform, a special program in order to prevent poverty and social exclusion was implemented: the Qualification Program (QP). The QP is an activation program (duration up to two years) for longer-term unemployed in need for a close and comprehensive follow-up. Within NAV, the QP has become the renewed context for social work: social workers act as supervisors within the program and the follow-up of participants should be standardised while measures should be individual and tailor-made.
Experience and research show that QP participants represent a complex user group, and a problem was reported: The social workers’ lack of professional competences required to succeed in this particular follow-up work. In conjunction with the practice field, the Norwegian Labour and Welfare Administration then implemented a skill training program: the Comprehensive, Methodical and Principle based Approach (CMPA).
The objective of the paper is to present social workers’ experiences of the skill training program as regards improvement of professional competences, investigated through a two-fold research question:
How do the social workers define professional competence and what competences do they find necessary to conduct effective and ethical professional practice with long term users of social services?
How do they assess their improvements of competences after participating in the CMPA skill training program?
Methods
The study is qualitative. Individual semi-structured interviews (18 social workers) and observations of the skill training program (five seminars, each lasting for two days) are analysed by approaching an interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), marked by the close understanding by each participant and the identification on emergent patterns and themes across interviews. Findings are interpreted within the theoretical framework on competence development and socio cultural perspectives on learning.
Results
The social workers find that their competences have increased as a result of participating in the CMPA skill training program. They feel empowered as regards professional skills and the competence to act. They report improvement of competences especially within the areas of encountering the users and engaging with the service system. They ascribe this to the program’s pragmatic approach on learning.
Conclusions and Implications
The results show the importance of further education for meeting the contextual needs in a complex and changing context for carrying out social work practice. Outcomes of a program may be connected to how well it is integrated with the social workers’ articulated needs, as they seem to engage in the program out of professional rather than organizational reasons. This calls for further attention of the importance of collaboration between social work education, practice and policy makers to ensure empowered, ethical and effective social work practice.