The article ‘Rebirth of a Profession’ discusses the new Codes of Practice for social care workers and their employers

The name Rebirth of a Profession discusses the new Codes of figure for affectionate superintend workers and their employers, together with the accompanying register, which were published in family 2002 by the General Social Care Council (GSCC). It puts forward the judgment that this is the shutdown of a twenty-year-old dream and the fulfilment of social workers hopes. Within this assignment the authors reasons for this view and the quality of the argument go out be analysed and evaluated using the processes of critical thought process.In order to do this thoroughly Damers (1995, cited by Gibbs & Gambrill, 1999, p206) quaternity criteria of a uncorrupted argument will be heeded. If any of these are violated, he states, hence the argument is blemished. The criteria require that the reasons must be relevant, acceptable and constitute adapted grounds for the truth of the conclusion. Fin in ally the reasons should provide effective rebuttal to all reasonable challenges to th e argument. Before this can be achieved, consideration of what critical thought process is and its relevancy to social work needs to be undertaken.Critical thinking involves the critical appraisal of beliefs, arguments and get hold ofs in order to arrive at well-reasoned judgements. (Gibbs and Gambrill, 1996, p. 3). Whilst this exposition is not absolute it provides a sound basis from which to commence and points to its employment to social caution. Social trouble staff frequently need to evaluate information to solve problems effectively and come to well-developed decisions. Swartz & Parks (1994, p. 338) argue that assessing the insight of ideas is crucial and failing to do so runs the risk of acting on ideas that are incorrect and may lead to harm.The expression tries to convince the indorser that the canons are a dream come true because they will give social care staff increased status, raise standards of care and increase shared responsibility between workers and emp loyers. The actual engraves are not given, perhaps base on the assumption that readers of Community Care, a finickyist magazine for social care staff, are already familiar with them. The reasons, given above, fulfil the relevance criteria in that if accepted they contribute to the truth of the conclusion. Whether they are acceptable will be examined later.The fifth dissever offers an analogy with the Nurses Code, though the work of nurses is not strictly analogous to that of social care staff. Relevant similarities exist they both deal with vulnerable people, are working to achieve the best practical outcome for the service user and in both cases a drift could result in serious consequences. The differences, however, question the value of the analogy as evidence (Brink-Budgen, 2000, p. 53). Nursing is a more structured profession and focuses on the medical model whereas social work deals with a number of different perspectives and models and indeed is harder to define.Furthe rmore, as is stated in the article, the new social work enter applies to a range of social care jobs. Therefore it is dubious as to whether the nurses autograph is relevant or comparable. Fallacies and assumptions, apparent in the reasoning, detract from the acceptability of the argument. Emotional language is used to divert the readers attention from the real issues. This is illustrated in the beginning two sentences of the article the first sentence evokes feelings of pathos followed by the second, which raises the reader to a sense of elation and optimism on behalf of social care staff.In order for the claim that the code will increase boffo recruitment to be true, it is necessary to assume that difficulties in recruiting social care staff are due to a previous omit of standards. heretofore thither is no consideration given to alternatives such as salary, nor is there evidence to support this assumption. Brookfield (1987, p. ) states that identifying and challenging assumpti ons is central to critical thinking and develops our contextual awareness. Omissions in the article contribute to a permeating sense of vagueness and lack of clarity.Little evidence/research is presented for the claims made that could be considered to be of time-tested quality or easily testable. Instead words such as many, often and most are used to precede a claim duping the reader into judge the claim as truth. For example how many social workers see the nurses code as an enviable badge of professionalism? On what has the author based the claim that most social workers have this view? Likewise, nowhere in the article is evidence or service user perspectives indicated to support the claim that the code represents a major gain for them.Considering that the service user is central to social care and the current trend is towards increased service user consultation this is a glaring omission (Lloyd, 2002, p. 164). Compounding the tone of vagueness are unexplained term and concepts, used within the article, which without remedy to further information, leads to a difficulty in deciding whether the premises are sound (Browne & Keeley, 2001, pp. 41-58). For example How will the special health hearings work? What sorts of health issues are included?Because this is not determined, it seems alarmist and raises questions of realizable discrimination in the workplace. This is particularly damaging in that anti-discriminatory practice is a core value of social work, which should constantly underpin practice. The issue of office is also ambiguous and concerning what is meant by the term individually accountable? Davies (ed. , 2000) states that Accountability at first a simple concept, is in reality complex when use to the practice of social work.There are a least four answers to the question to whom is the social worker accountable for her or his actions? . Accountability also holds connotations of blame (Banks, 2002, p. 30) which further demonstrates the importan ce of clear and unequivocal language (Adams et al. , eds. 2002). Having examined Damers (1995) first three criteria the rebuttal criterion will now be attended to. In order for this to be fulfilled the author should acknowledge any anticipate arguments and respond to them in a reasonable and straightforward way. Let us come back to the analogy with the nurses code.On the surface it appears to be a reasonable counter-argument, pointing out that the nurses code has not fulfilled expectations although it is a utile guide. In my opinion, however, it is a thinly veiled attempt to discredit the nurses code as inferior to the new social work code part on the basis that the nurses code does not include employers (paragraph ten) although the previous paragraph seems to contradict this point. In paragraph eleven the author raises questions which allude to likely negative effects of the code but these are skimmed all over and the information that follows seems purposefully vague.This ass ignment set out to examine the article using critical thinking skills and this has been achieved through the use of questioning and salaried attention to problems in the reasoning, arguments and claims made. Unfortunately it has not been possible to raise everything discussed in the article. However, it has considered the strength of the article based on Damers (1995) four criteria and been found lacking. Therefore, without clarifications and resort to further information, I can only conclude that the argument is flawed and, at this point, reject it as incomplete.