The
Profession
Structure Model (PSM) builds upon the
Therapeutic Play Continuum,
to include a competency framework, which provides detailed guidance for play
therapy: quality
management, training and development, career structure and
succession/staffing planning, recruitment and selection, skills analysis,
CPD, appraisal and remuneration grading and performance assessment as well
as further clarification of the various roles in the profession.
Private and public sector organisations have been developing and using
competencies and competency frameworks for about 20 years. Originally
competency based criteria were developed for very specific applications –
one set for designing training programmes, another as a basis for
remuneration scale grading etc rather as PTUK had first conceived the Play
Continuum as a communications tool. However it was soon realised that a
competency framework could be applied across a full range of
human
resource processes. Play Therapy International (PTI) believed in 2003 that it
might be extended to a full range
of
professional processes, as has since been proved.
A common set of criteria for all professional processes has two main
benefits:
- It provides the basis of a common (international) language for
describing the effectiveness of its members both internally to the
profession and even more importantly externally to its clients and other
'customers'.
- An opportunity to achieve a high level of consistency when measuring
quality of service and assessing performance.
PTI & PTIrl believes that ‘quality management’, perhaps better expressed as
‘clinical governance’, is fundamental to play and creative arts therapies. It
is as important as safety and indeed complete safety cannot exist without
clinical governance. Although outcome measures are paramount in clinical
governance they are not always obtainable and therefore it is our view that
activities, which can always be observed, should be compared to
agreed standards – a competency framework.
Sometimes there is confusion between ‘competence’ and ‘competency’. We
are using the term ‘Competence’ as an ability based on work tasks or job
outputs eg ‘Able to give a preamble to a child about to use a sand tray’ and
the term ‘Competency’ as an ability based on behaviour eg ‘Sets the
boundaries for a sandplay session prior to starting’. In practice many
frameworks blend both together and this is how the framework has been
developed..
See also:
Competency Profiles
(PTUK Site)
Example of a Competency
Profile (Play Therapist)
