Continuous Professional Development (CPD) is a core professional responsibility for all social workers. It supports safe, ethical, and effective practice by ensuring social workers maintain and build their professional knowledge, skills, and reflective capacity throughout their careers.

Under the AASW Code of Ethics and Practice Standards, social workers are individually responsible for maintaining their professional competence—regardless of whether CPD is required or funded by their employer.

CPD enables social workers to:

• Maintain ethical, competent, and accountable practice

• Stay informed about legislative, policy, and practice changes

• Respond effectively to emerging and complex practice issues

• Strengthen professional confidence, judgement, and decision-making

• Reduce professional risk and support safe practice

CPD across different practice settings

• Private practice: Supports ethical service delivery, risk management, and professional credibility

• Large organisations: Helps social workers adapt to organisational, policy, and system change

• Community, NGO, government, or sole roles: Ensures continued professional growth and responsiveness to diverse community needs

CPD is an investment in your practice, your clients, and the profession. Through meaningful and relevant learning, social workers strengthen their ability to create positive, ethical, and sustainable outcomes across all areas of practice.

AASW offers a range of learning opportunities to support professional practice.  Browse AASW on demand content, here, stay up to date with live upcoming webinars and workshops here or explore our specialist learning programs here.