Mirror mirror on the wall... Reflection in Social Work

Reflection is thought to be an important activity of a social worker working in child welfare. The systematic consideration of an experience or action would help to improve professionalism. But do social workers actually... [ view full abstract ]

Reflection is thought to be an important activity of a social worker working in child welfare. The systematic consideration of an experience or action would help to improve professionalism. But do social workers actually reflect? And which methods do they use for reflection? This question came from the three youth care organizations of the Twente Youth Care Expertise Center (EJT; a collaboration between three youth care services and a university of applied sciences in the Netherlands).
We conducted a quantitative study among pedagogical staff (n = 48), and ambulatory care providers (n = 84) of three youth organizations. We used the theory of planned behavior (Ajzen & Madden, 1986) to find out what determines whether or not social workers reflect on their work. We assessed attitude, social norm and self-efficacy of the social workers regarding reflection. In addition we studied the usage of several reflection models by the workers.
In addition a qualitative study was conducted among a small group of ambulatory care workers. The aim of this study was to examine the motivation of employees to reflect and the facilities they need to apply reflection methods in their work.
In the presentation the study will be discussed, as will the main conclusions, which are:
- most of the professionals have a positive attitude towards reflection
- reflection models offered to students in social work studies are not fully used in the practice of Social Work.
- important stakeholders, in particular colleagues and the educational institutions, regard reflection as important in the practice of Social Work, this encourages professionals to apply models of reflection
The study shows that although reflection is perceived as an important part of being a social worker, social workers still reflect insufficient methodically.