Children's social care workforce Continuing professional development (CPD)

Continuing professional development (CPD) is an important part of a social worker's professional standards. It aims to improve public safety and confidence in social work. CPD is the reflection and learning activity that as a social worker you'll undertake throughout your career to maintain and improve practice.

Appendix one - examples of good practice in CPD submissions

• Printing and sending a list of CPD activities for the whole period of CPD being assessed (e.g. allowing assessors to clearly see that standard 1 is met)
  
• Printing and sending examples of different types of CPD activities for the whole period of CPD being assessed (e.g. allowing assessors to clearly see that standard 2 is met)
  
• A detailed personal statement that focuses on three to four different CPD activities
  
• Personal statement taking a number of personal/professional objectives and demonstrating how these have been met and the benefits to service users
  
• Use of one or two A4 pages to write up a record of a CPD activity undertaken (eg what they did, what was learnt, what the benefits were)
  
• Using a structured format for the personal statement. For example: activity, what I learned, how this learning affected how I work, how my learning has benefited service users/quality of work
  

And a list of things NOT to do

• Don't try to describe in detail every activity you've undertaken over the last two years. Instead, select a small number of different activities that you feel benefited you the most and write about each one
  
• Don't send us evidence of all your CPD activities – we only need evidence to support the fact that the activities you've written about have taken place
  
• Don't include evidence which is confidential or includes confidential information – eg names of patients or clients. Please make sure that any confidential information is anonymised before you send it to us
  

Examples of questionable/poor practice in CPD submissions

• Sending in pieces of evidence marked “highly confidential” or “confidential”
  
• Failing to send in a list of CPD activities over the last two years to demonstrate that standard 1 had been met
  
• Submitting copies of patient reports / letters / case notes or patient-identifiable
  information as part of CPD evidence
  
• Keeping a record of day-to-day work activities (e.g. confusion between what is CPD and what is actual work)
  
• Listing activities that form part of a job description as a CPD activity without demonstrating standards 3 and 4 have been met. For example, recruitment activities such as short-listing for a post or interviewing are only CPD activities if the registrant is learning/developing their practice within these activities and can clearly explain and evidence this
  
• Sending a sample of a professional body CPD log and suggesting that the assessors could log on and look at the log if further information required
  
• Repeated use of “we” in a CPD statement with focus on what the department, service or organisation had achieved rather than what the individual had learned
  
• Excessive use of profession-specific abbreviations in the statement
  
• Printing and sending professional body CPD in monthly / calendar format or just printing the certificate or hours, as this provides insufficient detail