Nordat CPD Tool

What is Continuing Professional Development or CPD?

Continuing Professional Development (CPD) is a personal commitment to keeping your professional knowledge up to date and improving your capabilities. It focuses on what you learn and how you develop throughout your career. Chartered Institute of Personnel Development

To assist and facilitate the Continuing Professional Development process Norfolk DAAT have set up a number of downloadable and accessible resources including.

• An example of a CPD record index sheet
• A sample of a reflective learning log sheet
• A skills self appraisal (aligned to National Occupational Standards),
• Information (and a sample framework) on how to keep a reflective learning account.
• The DANOS software tool to help you build a DANOS based role profile.
• Information on the DAAT bursary scheme
• Information on local accredited and non accredited training courses
• NVQ 3 and progression awards / local centres
• Lastly the DAAT send out periodic e-mails featuring the latest conference details. For further details please see end of document. If you would like to be put on the conference mailing list please let us know
  

The NTA and Professional Development

The National Treatment Agency believe that required expansion and improvement of the treatment sector cannot be achieved without significant expansion in the workforce and a step change in the training and professional development of these employees. The NTA has implemented a programme of workforce development at a national level that will help achieve this.
The NTA workforce strategy sets targets for unqualified workers in the sector, for the continuous professional development of qualified practitioners, for unqualified  managers, and also directs professionally trained staff towards a special qualification, the progression awards.

The Development Cycle.
As you will see from the diagram reproduced below, professional development is a constant process of reflection, planning, action and evaluation.

Reproduced by kind permission of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain
the copyright belongs to the RPSGB.

The Development Cycle starts with the question ‘Why is my development required’ the next stage prompts you to consider what development opportunities there are that might meet your development needs.  The answer to these questions help in the formulation of an action plan. Once this plan has been put into action, the last two stages can be considered. Firstly, what has been achieved, as a direct result of the action plan activity, and lastly, reflecting on the whole process, has this met your present specific development needs. 

CPD record index sheet / building a portfolio of CPD evidence.
The CPD portfolio is your collection of evidence, this is usually stored in a A4 ring binder folder, and it brings together into one place, evidence of your learning and development.

The CPD portfolio is kept for a number of different reasons; as we have noted already, it records your professional development and experience. But keeping a portfolio also offers you the chance to reflect on your practice and through this to identify and set work goals and targets as well as training and learning needs.
Other people, for example supervisors and or managers, will wish to see your portfolio, but you can remove any information that you do not wish to share. In order that people can access the evidence of your learning and development, it is important that the information stored is done in a manner that a reader can easily find and understand. A front-page index sheet will facilitate that process.

Click here for an example of a CPD record index sheet.

CPD activities: evidence can be drawn from work-based learning; for example, learning by doing, in service training, significant event analysis. From Professional activity; lecturing / teaching, being a member of a specialist interest group. Formal education and self directed learning, for example reading journals and or articles.
 

Skills Self Appraisal

If you are a substance misuse worker your job role will have been mapped to DANOS, the Drug and Alcohol National Occupational Standards and or equivalent standards (a role profile).

To complete this skills self appraisal you may wish to refer to the DANOS units aligned to your job role.  If you don’t have a profile you can use the hyper link here to access the DANOS tool (5).

Click here to access the DANOS tool

The following exercise gives you the chance to assess yourself against those units, agreed by your manager, and applicable to your role. It will offer you the opportunity to consider how you measure up in the context of a range of important skills. 

However you score yourself, it is useful to ask yourself, ‘what evidence do I have for saying this?’ If I am saying I am fully confident and that I already do this completely, how can I evidence this? If you find it difficult to identify the evidence to show that you have the skill, it may be that you need to put yourself in situations where you can practise the relevant skills.

Click here for a blank downloadable skills assessment questionnaire.

How to keep a reflective learning account.
…ultimately, the most important learning occurs in the context of our day-to-day life, the aspirations we pursue, the challenges we face, and the responses we bring forth.  (Peter Senge et al, The Dance of Change 1999)

Reflection means looking back on an experience and making sense of it to identify what to do in the future.  Reflection helps you repeat what was effective, learn from mistakes, and it can build confidence. (Bingham and Drew 1999)

Learning from experience and keeping a reflective account

David Kolb’s experiential learning theory is quoted widely in discussions about informal education and lifelong learning, Kolb created his model out of four elements:

1. Concrete experience,
2. Observation and reflection,
3. The formation of abstract concepts and generalisations
4. and testing implications of concepts in new situations.

In Kolb’s model we see that reflecting on experiences is a key stage in our learning. Structured reflection is an effective way of identifying our development needs. And as such we can see the process of reflection as an important part of the Continuing Professional Development process. If we take the stages from Kolb’s theory and re phrase them as questions we have a stepped process for reflecting on and learning from, our experiences.

Shown below is an example you may wish to copy. For a blank copy to download please click here.

Once you have undertaken your action plan, you may wish to record what has been achieved and to reflect on the whole process.

The reflective learning log may prove useful (click here for a copy).

Click here to access the DANOS tool

DAAT bursary scheme: Norfolk DAAT operates a bursary funding scheme open to people working in the substance misuse sector within the County.

The bursary scheme has been set up to “support people in developing skills of direct and immediate importance to their work in substance misuse services”.

However the scheme is not a means of funding activities that are primarily within the scope of normal professional development.

Please click here to access the application form and guidance.

Local Training courses, DANOS aligned accredited and non-accredited.

Being a rural county poses challenges for the delivery of the training agenda. Norfolk is the 5th largest county in England. It is intensely rural in character, with varied landscapes and over 90 miles of coastline. 804,000 people live in Norfolk although as a result of tourism the population doubles in summer.

There are 21 market towns and 539 parishes in Norfolk, half of which have less than 250 residents; Norwich, Great Yarmouth and Kings Lynn are the only major urban centers.

The DAAT is committed to commissioning accessible, good quality and as far as possible, free training, delivered at a range of venues across the county. To further increase accessibility in a very rural county the DAAT are currently working on a web based package of learning. 

• Training specifications are approved by the Training and Workforce Development group and are informed by DANOS.
• Where possible training is multi disciplinary and uses local knowledge and talent to meet need across the sector.
• This strategy supports the development of a competent workforce across all tiers. Over the last three years the DAAT, with partners, have delivered the training strategy.  This has been well supported and received

Identifying training requirements:  The Norfolk DAAT training plan is informed by the annual treatment planning days, which set out agreed service priorities and associated training requirements. The training plan is aligned to the treatment plans and has an important part to play in helping to achieve or surpass the outcomes.

The Norfolk DAAT multi level model of training provision:  The DAAT use a multi level model for training: Foundation, Intermediary and Specialist. A model is currently replicated for Young People’s Training provision. This provides an effective way of approaching training provision in Norfolk.

The specialist knowledge content of courses increases as the participants move up the scale. The levels are:-

1.  Foundation level – for example the Foundation course in drug and alcohol awareness which gives participants a basic understanding of drug and alcohol issues in order that recipients may be able to provide advice, information, initial assessment and appropriate support and referral with confidence.

2.  Intermediary – for staff requiring a more advanced level of knowledge in more specific areas of working with drug and alcohol users. For example the Screening and Effective Interventions courses, or the Certificate Level One DAAT UEA accredited course.

3.  Specialist – for staff working within specialist agencies that wish to further their knowledge and skills base.  For example the LSCB (ACPC) Substance Misuse within the family course, the DAAT / UEA Dual Diagnosis accredited course, the Crack Cocaine course and specialist seminars and conferences,  for example Drugs, alcohol and reproductive health, Hep C Briefing and Alcohol, Prescription Medicines for the over 65s.

Training providers:  Norfolk DAAT has a full training programme run in locations around the county. To deliver these courses the DAAT draws upon a number of training providers and also draws upon local treatment providers to share their knowledge with students. Without the help of these people the DAAT would not be able to deliver the varied calendar of training events for both specialist and generic non-specialist services.

Click here to view a list of our current training courses

NVQ 3, Progression awards, FDAP & DAAT UEA :<
Unqualified workers: The Health and Social Care NVQ Level 3, which includes many of the Drug and Alcohol National Occupational Standards, has been developed for those workers who do not already have professional qualifications. The NVQ requires candidates to demonstrate their competence in four core units and four optional units drawn from the DANOS suite. You may also wish to consider the FDAP accreditation or the DAAT UEA Certificate in HE.

Qualified workers: Many people working in specialist substance misuse services will already have professional qualifications (psychiatrists, psychotherapists, doctors, nurses, social workers, probation officers etc). The NVQ 3 is not appropriate for this group. For these qualified workers the Progression award has been developed. This is suitable for professionally qualified workers moving into the substance misuse field who need to develop their specialist skills in working with substance users. This award is also appropriate for workers who have the Health and Social Care NVQ Level 3.

You may also wish to consider the Federation of Drug and Alcohol Professionals (FDAP) accreditation scheme, to find out more please click on the link.  http://www.fdap.org.uk/
To find out more about NVQ’s and to find out where you might be able to register please click on the link information@ccn.ac.uk

The DAAT and UEA run a Certificate in Higher Education Substance Misuse to find out more please click here.

Conference updates: The DAAT send out periodic e-mails featuring the latest conference details, if you would like to be put on the conference mailing list please contact us on Michael.Hutchinson.dat@norfolk.gov.uk