Code of Practice 2 : As a social care worker, you must strive to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and carers.

The second code means:

1. being honest and trustworthy;
2. communicating in an appropriate, open, accurate and straight forward way;
3. respecting confidential information and clearly explaining agency policies and confidentiality to service users and carers;
4. being reliable and dependable;
5. honouring work commitments, agreements and arrangements and when it is not possible to do so, explaining why to service users and carers;
6. declaring issues that might create conflicts of interest and making sure that they do not influence your judgement or practice; and,
7. adhering to policies and procedures about accepting gifts and money from service users and carers

　

Here's a case study that illustrates how important these principles can be in practice:

　

Mr Phillips is 24 and attends a work opportunities scheme for people with a learning disability. The work helps Mr Phillips to learn new skills and to use them to do his job.

He works as part of a team and has made new friends, he enjoys the camaraderie of the work environment and during the days he works the team rely on him to perform specific tasks.

His main carer is his mother and on the days he's at his work placement his mum makes arrangements to engage in activities she can't usually commit to because of her caring responsibilities.

On three occasions in the last month, Mr Phillips’ support worker has failed to arrive on time to take him to his work placement at a local supermarket. This meant that. Mr Phillips was disappointed and he felt he had left his colleagues down.  Also his mother had to cancel the arrangements that she had made.

　

Do you think that the carer may have breached some of these codes?

In your experience, do things like this happen often? If you had been Mr Phillip’s social care worker and you knew that you were going to be late picking him for his work placement – how would you deal with the situation?

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

　

How do the codes of practice help us work better? By Helen from the Dare2Care Wales team

So you work in care and you know how to do your job well, why do you need to look at some code of practice?

Actually, it’s good way or refreshing how we view the job and may even give us the chance to pat ourselves on the back when we see how we are a great examples of people who work in care.

The code of practice is essentially a list of standards that we can use to check we’re doing the best job possible.

Practically, the codes can help us every day so they can be really useful.

• We can use the code when we meet new clients to explain our role or when discussing an assessment or a care plan
• We can use it to help set work objectives, e.g. in supervision and appraisal
• We can use it to challenge poor practice by others
• And we can also use it to update our Post-Registration Training and Learning Records.

You can read the full document here but, if you want a summary to start with, here’s my summary:

1. Protect the rights and promote the interests of service users and carers.Treat each person with respect and help them control their own lives.

2. Strive to establish and maintain the trust and confidence of service users and carers. Be trustworthy; dependable and respect confidentiality.

3. Promote the independence of service users while protecting them as far as possible from danger or harm. Assist service users to understand and exercise their rights and report anything that adversely affects standards of care.

4. Respect the rights of service users whilst seeking to ensure that their behaviour does not harm themselves or other people. Take necessary steps to minimise the risks of service users from doing actual or potential harm to themselves or other people.

5. Uphold public trust and confidence in social care services. Never abuse the trust of service users and carers or condone any unlawful or unjustifiable discrimination.

6. Be accountable for the quality of your work and take responsibility for maintaining and improving your knowledge and skills. Work in an effective way, improve your knowledge and skills and contribute to the learning and development of others.

Does that sum up how you work?  We’d love to hear your thoughts and stories so please post you responses here!