Post qualifying education: the facilitating and restraining factors that influence decisions on whether to engage with post qualifying assessed programmes

Post qualifying education alongside continued professional development in social work has many benefits. Ongoing learning and development can promote reflective practice, increase practitioner confidence and improve service delivery. However, recent challenges in social work practice including recruiting and retaining staff, coupled with increasingly complex caseloads and year-on-year budget reductions, can all impact on employing organizations capacity to support staff development beyond required in-service training. The study reports on a practice evaluation employing focus groups and individual interviews to elicit social work practitioners’ views on factors that impact their decision-making about engaging in post qualifying (PQ) education and training, and what supports when they do. It conversely identifies factors that discouraged or created barriers to their participation. PQ training ranged from none beyond that mandated by their organization, to extensive. Findings indicate that practitioners developed increased confidence that changes practice through the development of professional curiosity and overall job satisfaction. Furthermore, the applied learning also benefits colleagues’ service delivery. Identified barriers included feelings of guilt by adding to colleagues work pressures owing to lack of workload easement, time, financial incentive and high caseloads. The article provides recommendations for social work education