Key capabilities in child care and protection

Executive Summary

The Key Capabilities ( KCs) in Child Care and Protection are designed to allow students within social work degree programmes to map their specific learning in this area whilst achieving the more generic Standards in Social Work Education ( SiSWE). The KCs further allow social work students to evidence their learning in child care and protection by their progress being assessed at the mid and end points of the programme. Key Capabilities are essentially the key areas of learning that students should be capable of achieving in relation to child care and protection both during and by the end of their social work degree programme.

The Key Capabilities document has four headings which together form the KCs in Child Care and Protection:

1. Effective Communication;
2. Knowledge and Understanding;
3. Professional Confidence and Competence;
4. Values and Ethical Practice.

Within the document, a set of examples, drawn from experienced university staff and practitioners from the field of child care and protection, recommend how students might evidence their learning at different Scottish Credit and Qualifications Framework ( SCQF) levels across a programme under each of these headings.

The KCs are not a new set of standards but rather a mechanism for students and social work programmes to evidence the level of knowledge and understanding that qualified social workers will have achieved at graduation. The KCs are designed to allow all programmes to track their own unique ways of teaching and supporting student learning in the field of child care and protection and be in a position to evidence this through quality assurance processes.

Within this document KCs have been separately aligned to undergraduate and post-graduate social work courses, the first being in relation to undergraduate courses.