Moving Beyond the Administrative: Supervisors' Perspectives on Clinical Supervision in Child Welfare

Abstract

This study contributes to the emerging knowledge base of child welfare supervision. An exploratory study examined the beliefs, practices, and experiences of 51 child welfare supervisors in Ontario, Canada. Eight focus groups were held with supervisors from a range of settings cross the province. The study identified a number of interwoven factors at the organizational, supervisory, and practice level that affect the nature of supervision offered. Implications are drawn for child welfare practice, models of supervision which integrate administrative, clinical and educational features, organizational culture, and training new supervisors.

The Effective Child Welfare Unit Supervisor

“…Other research related to child welfare supervision has focused on clinical supervision (Dill & Bogo, 2009;Lietz & Rounds, 2009) and the stress and job satisfaction of the supervisor (Collins-Camargo et al, 2009;Lee & Ashworth, 1993;Regehr, Chau, Leslie & Howe, 2004;Silver, Poulin & Manning, 1997) Only a handful of studies have addressed supervisory practice in child welfare (Clark et al, 2008;Dill & Bogo, 2009;Lietz & Rounds, 2009;Rushton & Nathan, 1996). Dill and Bogo (2009) found that the organizational context of child welfare has a large impact on the quality of clinical supervision. Handling the day-to-day personnel issues, managerial tasks, court work, and emergencies often preclude the ability of the supervisor to consistently provide individual supervision.…”

The Compatibility of Administrative and Educative Supervison

“…Dill and Bogo (2009) dedicated to the strengthening of the supervisor as a professional through educative supervision, they truly do not provide the best administrative supervision, as they become preoccupied with the idea of not being able to provide educative supervision to their own staff (Bogo & McKnight, 2005). Thus, good administrative supervision may come from good educative supervision; however good educative supervision rarely will come from administrative supervision.…”

“…Attention should be given to increasing the awareness of supervisors regarding their use of professionalism, confrontation, and feedback" (p. 83). However, most literature focuses on the supervisor developing educational functions to become a better clinician, whereas there is little focus on becoming a better administrator (Bogo & McKnight, 2005;Dill & Bogo, 2009;Greenspan et al, 1994;Itshaky, 2001). …”

“…Dill and Bogo (2009) explain that "agencies grant supervisors authority to direct others' work and supervisors use both formal power, such as rewards, coercion, and position, as well as, informal power derived from their expert knowledge and relationships with their supervisees" (p. 88). Bogo and McKnight (2005) assert that "administrative supervision refers to case assignment, and monitoring of assessment, intervention planning, and ongoing work to assist social workers to implement agency policy and procedures and work within the structure of the agency" (p. 51).…”

“…I found that the styles were not dependent on me as a new social worker. They were dependent on the experiences and schooling of the individual supervisor, their core values and beliefs, how busy the office was, and how much time the organization allowed for supervision (Bogo & McKnight, 2005;Dill & Bogo, 2009;Eagly & JohannesenSchmidt, 2003;Tromski-Klingshirn & Davis, 2007).…”