Social Care L7 & L8 Creative Skills 1 Assessment Semester 2 2026 | TU Dublin

Social Care L7 & L8 Creative Skills 1 Assessment Outline

Reflective Portfolio

1) Participation in groupwork in Social Care practice (30%)

a) Give a brief outline of the benefits and challenges of group work in social care settings (200 words)

b) Given your knowledge of group roles comment please read the following case study and answer the questions posed (300 words)

Derived from ‘Creating productive working Relationships’ Grant Davies
Leading Edge Performance Development Ltd, UK

Sheila Davidson and Alan Hardy held management positions in a large disability service in North Dublin. Sheila was the manager of the full regional service and Alan was manager of regional day services who reported to Sheila. They were experiencing some problems working together and their working relationship had been deteriorating for some time. Alan was an external appointment whom Sheila took on partly because he was different, and not constrained by the organisational culture. He was an effective service manager with a breath of experience from managing disability services in Australia, the UK and Ireland. He had an energetic approach and innovative ideas for progressing day services in Ireland. He was good at networking and creating good relationships with other services, workers and clients. He preferred to have a lot of autonomy in the way he operated, though at times he was seen by Sheila as a bit of a maverick and even occasionally as a ‘loose cannon’.

One of Sheila’s responsibilities was to present information about service reviews, quality improvements and progress to her Director on a regular basis. Her Director was a man who required detail in every report. Sheila had no problem with this; she liked to provide detail, wants the reports to be ‘right’, she is ambitious and likes to push and encourage those around her but can at times be a bit pushy in this. She had a good relationship with her boss which she wished to protect. The reports to him, however, were written by two department managers as part of their regular responsibilities. Alan was one of the managers Sheila felt that the reports she received from Alan were not detailed enough to be sent straight to her boss and so insisted on refining them herself before they were passed on. Alan was annoyed by this and saw Sheila as a ‘control freak’. The relationship had deteriorated to the point where Sheila was thinking that despite his obvious talents Alan must change or leave.

Questions

• Outline and describe the overall team-role profile for Sheila and Alan.
• Why do you think they challenge each other in the group context? What strengths and weaknesses do each show?
• How would you support them to work through the conflict arising between them using your knowledge of Belbin’s Team roles?

c) Complete the both the Social Style and Belbin self-assessment documents and write a reflection the following (300 words):

i) Who are you in the group context?

ii) What have you learned about how you behave in group settings?

iii) How will this help how you approach group facilitation in the future?

Please submit this self-assessment and groupwork reflection in the ‘Creative Skills 1-Groupwork assessment’ folder on moodle by Tues Feb 24th 5pm

This part of the assessment addresses the following learning outcome:

• Define the dynamics of the interpersonal interaction of groups and group development.
• Analyse approaches to conflict resolution and identify conflict styles.

It supports the student to meet the following proficiencies:

• D1.8.14.19 D2.11 16. D5 7.11.