2 What have you learned?
There is a range of possible reasons why you wanted to study this course. Perhaps you are considering volunteering in a setting that provides care for people who lack mental capacity. Perhaps you are already working in such a setting and wanted to build up your knowledge. Perhaps you care for a relative or friend who lacks mental capacity or wanted to know more about making decisions on behalf of others. Decisions concerning mental capacity might be affecting you at the moment or may do so in the future.
Whatever your reasons for doing the course, reflecting on what you have learned will help you think about your next steps. This might be looking for a new course to study or looking at options for your professional development. You might want to identify future plans for yourself or think about those for someone for whom you are caring.
Reflection is an integral part of learning and throughout this course you have had a lot of practice in applying key ideas to your own experience. You may already have made a note of questions you want to think about further or topics that particularly interested you. In the next activity you will go back over the topics you’ve covered and remind yourself what you found particularly interesting or relevant. There may have been some ideas or activities that you found more challenging than others that you want to look at again.
Activity 2 Reviewing the topics and activities
Table 1 reminds you of the topics you covered in each week. Identify those you feel confident about and those you would like to look at again. You might want to revisit the activities associated with each topic to remind yourself. Reviewing the material in this way will help you when you come to the compulsory quiz at the end of the week.
| Week | Key topics | I am confident about these | I would like to learn more about these |
| 1. | defining mental capacity | ||
| 2. | understanding decision making | ||
| 3. | |||
| 4. | |||
| 5. | |||
| 6. | |||
| 7. | |||
| 8. |
Comment
Completing this table will have given you a sense of what you have achieved so far. You might have noted some topics that particularly interested you and that you want to study further.
Next you will develop these thoughts and think about putting them in to action.
Activity 3 What do you want to study next?
Identify three areas that you would like to know more about. This may be through further study, your work or in your personal life. Try to make your ideas quite specific. So, instead of writing ‘look again at doing an assessment’, write something like ‘practise using the assessment documents.’
Note down whether you think this is something you could do now or would be best done in the future, and whether you would like to do it through more learning.
Table 2 has been partially filled to show the kind of information you need to capture.
| Priority area | Why? | What I want to do | How I might do it |
| Practise doing a mental capacity assessment | To make sure I understand what a mental capacity assessment is | Look again at the forms and complete them as if it was my work role | Discuss this when I am looking at my development needs in work |
| Consider my financial circumstances | To ensure that others understand my wishes should I lose mental capacity | Look again at the information concerning making decisions about money | Revisit the section on decision making and search other resources |
When you have identified your priorities, you will be in a good position to decide on your next steps. These could involve further learning in your personal life or in your current or future workplace.