Supervision in a Changing Organisation

Abstract

The role of the Senior has never been properly defined, but requires clearer definition and identity at a time of new demands and greater accountability. The author analyses the demanding and conflicting set of expectations facing supervisors if they are to offer a useful and coherent service to their teams.

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

“…Few probation practitioners today would argue against the view that front-line SPOs find themselves working somewhere between a rock and a hard place, with recent Probation Inspectorate reports reflecting this issue (HMIP, 2020). With senior management and organisational pressures from above pressing against resource, practitioner and risk management demands from below, working life over the decades has become increasingly managerial in scope and demanding in nature (Boswell, 1986; Brown, 1969; Thornborough, 1972). In the National Probation Service (NPS), at least the SPO role presents as too broad in nature, with insufficient time to balance quality and workload issues.…”

“…Still in the 1980s, Gwyneth Boswell (1986) strikes a more considerate tone as she questions where support for SPOs is to come from within a role that she characterises as containing multiple and conflicting demands. This is especially so in relation to managing the powerful dynamic contained within the SPO–PO relationship.…”

“…Beddoe explores how broader notions of risk within society extend to surveillance and control of professionals, in part through risk-averse, defensive, output-driven bureaucratic systems and that this risk aversion is in turn maintained partly through the supervision process. As with Boswell (1986), she argues this cannot but impact directly upon the supervisor–supervisee relationship, leading to tensions within it. What is therefore not required, according to Beddoe, is the current muddled approach that confusingly intermingles functional, organisational-management requirements with clinical, CPD-focussed professional needs.…”

‘Pushed from above and pushed from below’: Emotional labour and dual identities amongst senior probation officers in England and Wales

“…Alongside the introduction of a large-scale managerial structure, this shift inevitably impacted on the expectations placed on SPOs and positioned them explicitly as managers of teams of practitioners:In response to the changing phases of the Service, Seniors seem to have undergone a kind of metamorphosis from advisers, encouragers, organisers of work, to casework ‘experts’, team leaders and facilitators and finally into first-line managers, operating at the interface between main-grade and higher management. (Boswell, 1986: 136)…”

From Caseworker to Manager

“…The discrepancies in the positions adopted by those seniors who undertook casework supervision and those who declined to provide it raises interesting issues about its nature (see Boswell, 1986, andDavies, 1988). Those in the former group understood casework supervision to be part of a social work process that examined, inter alia, the ways in which probation officers engaged with their clients.…”