Comprehensive Portfolio: Reflective Practice in Health & Social Care

This portfolio provides a comprehensive overview of professional development in health and social care, reflecting on leadership views and aspirations, the development of key skills and attributes through a group project, a detailed CV, and a self-assessment of strengths against graduate attributes and learning outcomes. The reflection on leadership discusses the importance of self-awareness, motivation, and building a positive work environment. The group project reflection utilizes Gibb's reflective cycle to analyze teamwork effectiveness and individual roles, drawing upon Belbin's team role theory. The CV highlights key skills such as communication, teamwork, and critical thinking. The portfolio concludes with a reflection on aligning personal strengths with graduate attributes, aiming for continuous professional growth. Desklib offers similar solved assignments and resources for students.

Running head: PORTFOLIO
Portfolio
Name of student:
Name of university:
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Reflection on leadership..................................................................................................................3
Reflection on group project.............................................................................................................5
CV....................................................................................................................................................9
Reflection on strengths against NTU graduate attributes and learning outcomes.........................13
References......................................................................................................................................17

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Introduction
Health and social care is a professional field where practitioners are involved in
providing range of support to clients and their families to ensure that all holistic care needs of
client is met. The core responsibility of a health and social care practitioner is to professionally
interact and work with diverse client group to provide optimal health and social care support.
They play a role in fulfilling holistic care needs of client by managing, physica, psychosocial and
rehabilitation needs of client. They may work with client directly or in specific care organization.
The support provided is based on skill related to communication, assessment, planning and
evaluation of a care programe. This report provides an overview about my own professional
portfolio related to the health and social care job. I have worked in semi-independent units,
nursing homes and residential homes to provide support to clients with challenging behavior,
mental illness, learning disability and many other issues. Certain knowledge, skills and attributes
are necessary for job in this field and this reflective portfolio gives an overview about my initial
views on leadership and leadership style and provides. The portfolio also provides an insight into
my development of key skills, knowledge and attributes through reflection on a group project,
details about the CV and self-assessment of my strengths against graduate attributes and my
ability to meet certain learning outcomes for the module.

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Reflection on leadership
As a student of health and social care discipline, I acknowledge the importance of
leadership in this domain. I would like to take this opportunity to reflect on my personal ideas
and viewpoint about leadership. In this reflection I would like to highlight the values, views,
aspirations for my future career, and the role I would like to undertake in this domain.
Leadership is a practical skill that encompasses the ability to lead and guide others
towards a particular goal (White, Currie and Lockett 2014). A leader is a person that is
responsible for initiating actions that others are to follow for getting a work done. Further, a
leader is to play an incentive role in the tasks delegated to the team. In believe that the prime role
of a leader is to motivate group members to act in a manner aligned with the team’s motives and
objectives. I have been aspired time and again by the concept of leadership, and feel that
leadership is crucially important in the contemporary era to achieve success in health and social
care domain. The cornerstone of leadership is self-awareness. This implies that as a leader one
must be working to understand the personal weaknesses and strengths (Moss 2017). In addition,
one must be ready to model the ways in which own values are congruent to the behaviors
(Glasby 2017). In my viewpoint, a leader’s job is not limited to supervising and management.
Such a role entails guiding role that implies instructing the subordinates the way they are
required to act for working efficiently and effectively. Creating confidence among the members
is a crucial factor that can be achieved by understanding their concerns. Health and social care is
a field where success can be achieved, as a professional, by working in collaboration with others
(Martin et al. 2015). I therefore opine that leadership can be the only tool for enabling maximal
input from individuals.

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In future, I am keen on taking up the role of a leader in the health and social care sector.
This could be in any particular discipline. As a leader, I aspire to focus on building morale of
subordinates and followers, and building work environment in the setting in which I would work.
The willing cooperation of the followers towards the work is crucial for managing the work
(Smith et al. 2018). As a leader I would like to act as a morale booster through achievement of
full-corporation. The idea would be to motivate them to work and perform to the best of their
abilities. Coordination would be achieved by reconciliation of personal interests with the goals of
the organization.
The predominant leadership skills that I would like to focus on include fearless agility,
empathy, selflessness, flexibility and humility. Leaders who can think effectively, decide in a
swift manner, and inspire others are able to meet the demands of the working profession. My
future leadership role would revolve around by capacity to build intelligence within myself to
address issues and concerns of others. Compassion and empathy in leadership would be the
cornerstone for bringing individuals together in a team who have mutual trust and respect.

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Reflection on group project
Implementation of an effective leadership in teamwork is crucial in health and social
care. In this paper a reflection is put forward on personal experience regarding group project. It
would describe the role taken, the process and dynamics linked with theory about team work.
The reflection would be done with the help of Gibb’s reflection cycle. The Gibb’s reflective
cycle is a popular reflection model that is divided into six stages; description, feelings,
evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. The reflection would include relevant team
work and leadership theories as applied for critically analyzing the way the group worked, how
effective it was and what could have been done better.
Description
I undertook a group activity to carry out primary research to understand the needs of
health and social care of older patients aged 70 years and above. A group was formed with 6 of
my peers and as a team we were to engage conducting interviews with participants to gain
qualitative data and analyze them accordingly. Based on my understanding I had identified that a
group work or team work is a collective effort of more than one individual who have a common
interest. Group dynamics is the team of people acting in an interdependent manner as they
exhibit good communication skills, different set of knowledge and interaction ability with others
regardless of the shared responsibilities (Weiss 2018). Reflecting on this concept I feel my group
work was a task-focused group work as every member had to delegate separate set of tasks. My
role in the group was that of a leader who was responsible for leading others and guiding them
on how to carry out the research. As a leader, one needs to be focusing on the outcomes of the
group activity, through effective communication and exhibition of intelligence (Becker 2014).

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Feelings
At the initial level, I was confident to be a part of the small group and take up leadership
role as I thought it would give me the opportunity to communicate without major challenges.
Nevertheless, I felt anxious and nervous about exhibiting leadership skills and working in a
group as I thought the approaches of different team members would be different with respect to
the task to be done. Further, I was frightened as to my perception the group was a task purposed
group only. According to Thomson et al. (2015) communication is elementary to human
interactions. Individuals are not able to relate to other without communication while working in a
team. I tried to gather courage to take the initiative and delegate tasks to my team members.
Throughout the task, we were engaged in assessing the task as a group after setting out ground
rules, and standards through interaction and communication (Chan et al., 2017). I was able to
communicate in an interactive manner and conveyed my ideas to the members. According to
Redmon (2017) conflict management is crucial in group dynamics. Each team member is to
convey the ideas and have initiative to resolve personal disagreement. Throughout the task there
were minimal disagreements. However, we decided to meet after our classes to discuss any
challenges emerging so that they could be addressed positively.
Evaluation
We started to work in a connected manner with positive motivation. Team performance
was evaluated in terms of the extent to which members contributed ideas and discussed about
any possible changes that could be made for meeting the goals of the group work. As the leader
of the group I tried to established harmony among the members and build up rapport with them. I
wanted to get the job done in a proper manner and thus my focus was on maintaining a positive

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relationship with all members. However, I was not satisfied with the group formation as though
the members were task focused the members were not satisfied with the specific roles they had to
adhere to. At one point of time the group dynamics began to lose the structure and the members
struggled to function properly.
According to the theory of Belbin, team role depends on behavior, interaction with others
and contributions of each member. Teams that have balance of different personality types are
found to be performing better than those where there is less variation in inputs (Meslec and
Curşeu 2015). Every member in a team is unique and possesses behaviors that are highly
different from each other. When a team functions optimally, the members are known to have
clear responsibilities (Valentine, Nembhard and Edmondson 2015).
Analysis
Following the concept put forward by Belbin (Kadushin and Harkness 2014) in relation
to individual role in a team, the role that best described me in the team was ‘implementer’. This
is because I was primarily given the charge of getting the tasks done in a systematic manner.
Further, I enacted the role of a ‘completer-finisher’ as I had been apprehensive about deadlines
and had the hope of completing the work within the set deadline. I was to reflect on the ideas
emerging from each team member and come up with suitable approaches accordingly. From the
persona point of view, it would be justified to state that the group acted in a close form but there
was a high scope for positive changes in my leadership skills.
Conclusion
In conclusion it is to the said in this account that all members have equal importance in a
team. Though the role of a leader entails greater accountability and responsibility, a team cannot

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function without effective group dynamics. It is important that each individual is delegated a task
that would be the prime focus. Nevertheless, leadership acts as the tool to ensure effective and
successful group task. For this notion our group lacked formality of order. Secondly, though
communication was proper there was some disorganization in the group and initial standards
were not met at every step. The communication was primarily a task-focused one and was not
based on interrelations.
Action plan
Drawing in lessons from the undertaken group activity, I would bring in certain positive
changes in my skills to better act in the role of a team leader. For encouraging collaboration and
participation in a group, I would empower the group to contribute maximal input (Glasby 2017).
I would further communicate with members by providing feedbacks at different stages of the
group work.

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CV
NAME: Christine Jones
ADDRESS: 33 Morton way
Key skills and expertise:
 Strong communication and interpersonal skills
 Ability to engage in effective team work and collaboration with inter-disciplinary team in
health and social care
 Strong understanding about communication and leadership attributes needed for health
and social care job
 Effective critical thinking and critical reflection skills to retrieve and process information
and take good decision
 Good knowledge about professional attitude, ethical behaviour and privacy and
confidentiality requirements in the job
 Clear theoretical understanding about team dynamics and interest in professional
development.
 Ability to take on high level of personal responsibility and autonomy to promote safety of
client
 Good technical skills to process and manage client information
Professionals summary:
 I am a confident and highly motivated lady with consistence desire for success and
achievement. I am generally hardworking flexible good listener and l am able to

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communicate efficiently in all levels and can maintain records appropriate. I have the
ability to work through my own initiative, with minimum supervision and able use my
own initiative and can cope with challenging tasks able to prioritise tasks, and working
under pressure. I also enjoy working as a team is the key to achieve goals so l will put
maximum effort to work as a team.
 I am able to work any shift and complete task I assigned to me at the required time and I
am a good time keeper. Having worked in different organisations I have gained more
skills and ability to deliver my services professionally.
 I have an outgoing personality and flexible but highly professional and motivating
character. I have the ability to motive others and achieve results. I am flexible and eager
to learn new skills and l am motivated by opportunities and new ideas
 I am adaptable to the situation and manage client issues in a professional manner
 I have achieved good appreciation in my past job for good conduct, overall team
performance, client satisfaction and overall job performance
EDUCATION AND QUALIFICATION
Academic qualification:
 Health and Social Care Degree From 2015 to date
 Access to Higher Education Diploma (Nursing and Health Professionals 2014
 NVQ level two in Health and Social Care 2004
IT skills:
 Computer Skills : Information Technology Diploma Word processing
 Advanced knowledge of internet and email, word processing, spread sheets etc

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EMPLOYMENT HISTORY
March 2001 to date
Worked in semi-independent units, residential homes, nursing homes.
1. Worked with various client groups, challenging behaviour, a mental health, learning
disability, live in carer, supported living, nursing homes.
Key job responsibilities
 I worked with various clients as a support worker up to date undertaking duties in order
to provide a home safe environment to the clients. Help ensure that rooms and common
spaces are properly cleaned and maintained. To carry out any other tasks that may be
assigned to you by senior staff. To ensure that high standards of care are offered all the
time, meals or time of sleeping for clients
 And to participate in the daily activities of the clients, which will enhance their quality of
life and to report any significant changes in the health or circumstances of the clients to
the manager on duty. I treat the people l support with dignity and respect and also aware
of the confidentiality required in a care environment and good care practices. I worked as
a volunteer distributing clothes ,food, supporting them to apply for jobs and to give them
as much support as we can to build their lives back.