Supervision: A contested space for learning and decision making

Abstract

Supervision is a core activity in social work in the UK and elsewhere, widely associated with a range of positive outcomes for service users and professionals, while Public Inquiries and Serious Case Reviews have identified poor supervision as a factor in some child deaths. While there is agreement on the nature and value of 'good' supervision there are debates on the possibilities of delivering it in today's pressured, poorly resourced working environments and a lack of data on what actually happens in supervision. This article presents some findings from interviews with social workers and their managers drawn from a wider study on how social workers make decisions in child protection work. They suggest that supervision is an important site for evaluating practitioner accounts and thereby constructing knowledge and making decisions about cases against a background of uncertainty and complexity. However, the ways in which these processes were negotiated shed light on supervision as a complex social process with a range of unofficial, tacit functions, embedded in the webs of social actions and exchanges that created and sustained the identities of the practitioners and their teams. What also emerged were the complex skills experienced supervisors developed in challenging and refining practitioner accounts, skills which novice supervisors struggled to acquire.

Probation staff supervision: Valuing ‘me time’ within congested spaces

“…Finally, and with a second brief detour into the social work literature, we find the work of David Saltiel (2017) speaking to our current situation as he proposes a model of supervision that is fundamentally collaborative in nature. This is due in part to the highly complex and contested space that he understands supervision to represent as both supervisor and supervisee wrestle to shape their professional identities while at the same time striving to forge individual and collective knowledge.…”

“…The limited evidence that is available from the KSS CRC study offers the impression that SPOs operate somewhere between the two ends of a supervision spectrum in which professional aspirations struggling within an arena of incessant work demands. SPO clarity of role may prove interesting here as the bifurcating demands of the job require not only organisational support but assistance with the challenges of identity formation in terms of self, team, and wider organisation as aspects of this may become lost within pressured working environments (Saltier, 2017). Of note is the fact that several respondents within the current study were clearly aware and sympathetic towards the position of SPOs, reminiscent of values held since the 1970s that supervision should be a mutually beneficial process for all involved (Williamson, 1978).…”

“…Staff supervision is a multidimensional process (Skills for Care, 2007), within which aspects of contestation or collusion between involved parties can occur (Saltiel, 2017). It is often characterised by managerial demands intersecting with clinical understandings of how best to conduct individual sessions, with tensions existing between the two models (Beddoe, 2010).…”

Making the connections: A practice model for reflective supervision

“…These current realities require social workers to re-think and re-define their professional practices. Recent research has reported that supervision has huge significance in developing and sustaining a social worker's professional identity and their role (Saltiel, 2016). Through reflective supervision, the social worker can develop confidence through critical examination and manage the contradictions and complexity associated with their professional position.…”

“…Maintaining professional relationships is core to social work and the supervision space reveals contested and competing narratives from the supervisor, supervisee, service users, and other professionals (Saltiel, 2016). An open discussion and exploration of the social worker's professional relationships are central to reflective supervision.…”