Critical incidents and mistakes as stimuli for reflective practice in social services

As Schön (1983) effectively argued, reflection is the basis for a skilled practitioner and there are various strategies for developing reflective practice without leaving it to chance: frameworks for reflection (i.e. Gibb’s reflective cycle and Johns’s model of structured reflection; Jasper 2003), reflective writing and others. Reflection on mistakes and failures is a promising field in which to develop strategies for the reinforcement of professional skills in social workers. But reflection is not only an activity to be conducted alone. All forms of dialogue and even of criticism, that is when the social worker receives and offers advice and criticism on the errors committed or observed, can expand the “visual field” of the daily practice. It should be noted that what the single person learns is part of organizational learning. This is not the simple sum of knowledge of individuals, but is the process and the product leading an organization to develop strategies to carry out actions directed to itself and its environment. This is also the reason why strategies to develop better communication, supervision and sharing of knowledge are of special interest for a higher quality of social services. One interesting field is related to the treatment of criticism among colleagues, as suggested by Hathaway (1990) and others (e.g. Sicora, 2010). The result of qualitative research made in some Italian services and the review of some strategies for a structured reflection coming from criticism amongst colleagues shows various things: - detecting the error of a colleague poses many dilemmas: to talk or not to talk with the colleague who made the mistake? If you decide to intervene, how should you do this?; - there is a general agreement on the need to discuss with the colleague who is wrong, although there is a wide awareness of the difficulty of doing this; - the quality of the relationship is seen as the basis for deciding whether to talk, and then how to talk, about the mistakes detected; - some of the modalities on "how" and "when" (i.e. “ad hoc” meeting, risk management procedures, etc..) can improve collective learning without exacerbating more or less latent conflicts. Coordinators and managers have a crucial role in creating the organizational conditions needed for dealing with all this.