Publications from ODSW Social Insights: Letters by DSW (Vol 2) | Seite 17

Fundamentals of Social Work
how these could be used for performance management could be learned
as one assumes team leader roles. That is also the point when the difference
between “leading in leadership” in contrast to the “management” role
becomes significant.

Role change and job mobility
While social work education inducts students on how to work with clients
on transitions in life course and in role change and mobility in jobs, we
perhaps do not prepare students sufficiently to handle role change and job
mobility for themselves. With the growth and expansion of social services,
new and wider variety of job options have opened up. It is therefore relevant
to prepare students to think about how their own role change could be
addressed in order to make it an uneventful and a positive experience not
just for themselves but for the clients they work with and the team that they
belong to.

National Social Work Competency Framework
In the hope of strengthening the social work sector, social work education
and post education professional development now have a competency
reference. The framework is a way of enabling social workers to progress
beyond foundational competence to proficiency and expertise. It is
important however to understand that competency is necessary and key
to good service delivery and outcomes but not sufficient for a profession.
After all, the key to quality and efficiency is professionalism. Professionalism
is more about exhibiting a courteous, conscientious and generally positively
businesslike manner.
A profession is characterised by a job that requires a specific education, as
well as training and skills that are guided by a Code of Ethics. People in a
profession conform to the technical or ethical standards of that profession.
A high level of professionalism is a mark of a mature profession. It is marked
by the ability to take charge and to be in control and accountable for what
is a professional judgement and opinion. It involves a systems approach at
viewing issues that goes beyond the individual cases. It is a professional
wisdom that is drawn from among other things and the collective experience
of intervening in many individual cases. Social work in Singapore is relatively
young in comparison to many of the other professions such as engineers,
lawyers or accountants.

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