News

During the national Key Capability workshops a range of ideas were shared by participants in respect of each of the 4 main KC headings, Effective Communication; Knowledge and Understanding; Professional Competence; Values and Ethical Practice.The results of these discussions have been drawn together by the project team and are presented here linked to feedback from the workshops in Aberdeen, Glasgow, Dundee and Edinburgh.

Innovative new examples about how to meet the key capabilities will be posted on this site at the end of November and thereafter at the end of each month.These examples, drawn from classroom and practice settings and collated by practice teachers, link workers and academics provide practical advice and example about creative ways to meet these requirements.

As you may be aware, the Key Capabilities in Child Care and Protection were published in December 2006 and are required to be met by all social work students from September 2007. This is a requirements for all students, whatever their practice learning opportunity and does not apply only to child care settings, therefore all Practice Teachers must be aware of these Key Capabilities.

The Key Capabilities project www.iriss.ac.uk/keycapabilities to support the embedding of key capabilities across all social work programmes highlights a range of examples where innovative practice has enabled students to meet key capabilities in non childcare settings.

An initial distribution of the Key Capabilities documents was made in December 2006 and further copies of the document will shortly be sent to other organisations including the Learning Networks, Universities, Local Authority and some voluntary organisation training sections as well as the Voluntary Sector Social Services Workforce Unit. If you require a copy of the document please contact one of the above outlets however if they are unable to help, please contact the Institute. Alternatively, the document can continue to be downloaded at www.iriss.ac.uk/keycapabilities.

Calling all social work academics and practice partners. Stacey, on behalf of the project would like to hear from anyone who is prepared to share their developing documentation, designed to support student assessment in practice and classroom settings, with others. Each university and many practice partners are developing innovative new ways to document how and when students meet Key Capabilities - sharing this work will prevent many wheels being reinvented. Anonymised examples will be shared on this site.

The Glasgow workshop on 16th Oct is now fully booked although there are places at the Stirling workshop on 17th Oct at the Stirling Highland Hotel.