Matua Raki August 2016 newsletter
To work well with people who have problems with addiction, mental health and/or disabilities we need to demonstrate competency in many areas of practice. A new online tool from Te Pou and Matua Raki provides an easy way for organisations to assess staff knowledge and skills and plan targeted workforce development.
It all started with Let’s get real
Since 2009, Let’s get real has provided a framework and common language to describe the knowledge, skills, values and attitudes needed by the mental health and addiction workforce. Since then, other knowledge and skills frameworks have been developed based on Let’s get real including Te Whare O Tiki for working with co-existing problems, Let’s get real: Disability for people working in the disability sector, and Competencies for the mental health and addiction service user, consumer and peer workforce.
Real Skills was developed from a need for accessible information
Recognising that the workforce needed an easy way for individuals and services to collect and review information on knowledge and skills that might need development in order to provide best practice, Te Pou and Matua Raki developed the Real Skills online assessment tool. Real Skills allows workers to assess themselves against one or all of the frameworks, noted above, and receive a summary report of their strengths and possible development needs. These reports can then be used to inform supervision and support individual professional development plans.
Workers can choose which framework is relevant to them and their role at any point in time
Real Skills provides the ability for organisations to sign up their entire workforce in order to generate organisational, service and/or team level reports. These reports aggregate anonymous self-assessment information for any framework that the organisation considers relevant to their work. The aggregated reports provide a snapshot or baseline indicator of current workforce capability and workforce development needs.
This information can then be used to create workforce development plans in the specific areas where the greatest needs have been identified. Progress can be evaluated using Real Skills again at a later date. For example, if most of the workforce identified a need to develop knowledge and skills in Working with Māori (Let’s get real) or to carry out substance use and mental health screening (Te Whare o Tiki) then specific training programmes can be developed or accessed to address these needs.
For more information or to discuss how your organisation can sign up contact ashley.koning@matuaraki.org.nz.
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