APEL Level 3 Certificate in work with children(Early Years or Playwork), Unit 2: reflect on practice Section 8 - Reflect on how your practice engages with families and others who are significant to the children.
This section, like sections 4 and 7, asks you to reflect on what you do rather than to explain it. If you can reflect on your practice, this will indicate the depth of your understanding and your ability to set in motion a continuous improvement cycle. This is best practice and is why reflective analysis is used within the APEL qualification.
Reflection is a process of stepping back and looking critically at what we do, how we do it, why we do it that way and whether we should change the way we do it in the future. It helps you to identify the parts of your practice that need to be improved.
This section concentrates on how you relate to families, carers and others who may be important to the children in your setting. This could include relatives, friends or other professionals with whom the child has an important relationship. In this section, remember to concentrate on how you form relationships with the adults who are important to the children you work with, rather than the children themselves.
Sub-section 1
Skills you use to recognise and respond to relationships that are important to the children in your setting.
* This asks you to look in particular at how you identify relationships that are important to the children you work with, and the steps you take to make links with and include these people in your practice with the children.
* Positive relationships are extremely important to and benefit children.
Remember, don't just state what you do; identify how and why. The kinds of relationships involved depend on your work setting and the ages of the children, but you must reflect on your own practice, because when you do this you can identify your personal strengths, weaknesses and so forth.
* The kinds of skills you might want to consider include various methods of communication, for example speaking, listening, and electronic or paper-based communication. How do you know the appropriate way to respond in particular circumstances?
* Remember to include how you know that the communication has been effective. Where children, or important people in their lives, have barriers to effective communication, how do you deal with this? Why do you take the action you take?
Sub-section 2
Strengths, weaknesses, and training and development needs of your practice in this area.
* This may sound quite difficult, but all you need to do is spend a little time thinking about the things you know you're good at and aspects of your work that you know could be improved. You may wish to get a colleague or superviser to work with you on this one.
* Many practitioners are very good at relating to children or young people, but find it more difficult to relate to parents or carers. Once you have established your strengths and weaknesses you can begin to identify your training needs.
* Sometimes we need to become more assertive in making and maintaining positive relationships, and in this case assertiveness training may be of value.
Sub-section 3
Factors which have had positive and negative influences on your practice in this area.
* You may be the sort of person who can talk easily to different people, because this is the way you were brought up and your work gives you plenty of opportunities to do so. Alternatively, you may have little opportunity to meet the important adults in a child's life. If this is the case, you might need to ask yourself if this area should be opened up and whether you need to create new opportunities.
NB: Remember always to follow the requirements of your awarding body - your mentor will provide support to help you get a clear picture of what these are.
