CONTINUING PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT OF SOCIAL WORKERS IN PRACTICE: AN EXPLORATIVE INVESTIGATION

Abstract

The paper starts with a brief autobiographical reflective narration of my own experience as asocial worker. The purpose is to demonstrate and contextualise the interaction, change andinherent ambivalences in relation to my own experience of post-qualifying learning. I qualifiedas a social worker in 1978. My first employment was with the Department of Social Welfare(Coloured Affairs) in the Western Cape. During the first week of my induction I wasintroduced to two important people, my supervisor and the “In-service training manager”(ISTM). My supervisor was responsible for supervising my day to day workload. The ISTMwas exclusively responsible for guiding and testing me on the content of a thick lever-arch filecalled the in-service training manual. The latter contained all the relevant legislation, policiesand departmental procedures that I had to study and know before becoming a permanentlyemployed social worker and public servant. Every Friday I would religiously go to the inservicetraining guru to be tested on the contents of the file. The ISTM was also kept informedby my supervisor about my performance on the job and would comment on my progress asindicated by my “stats”. The latter was a record of how many clients I had seen and what theresults achieved on each of these were. This process would continue until the in-servicetraining was satisfactorily completed.