Supervision in Social Work

Contemporary Issues

Liz Beddoe, Jane Maidment, Liz Beddoe, Jane Maidment

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781317629221
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

Supervision is currently a "hot topic" in social work. The editors of this volume, both social work educators and researchers, believe that good supervision is fundamental to the development and maintenance of effective practice in social work. Supervision is seen as a key vehicle for continuing development of professional skills, the safeguarding of competent and ethical practice and oversight of the wellbeing of the practitioner. As a consequence the demand for trained and competent supervisors has increased and a perceived gap in availability can create a call for innovation and development in supervision. This book offers a collection of chapters which contribute new insights to the field. Authors from Australia and New Zealand, where supervision inquiry is strong, offer research-informed ideas and critical commentary with a dual focus on supervision of practitioners and students. Topics include external and interprofessional supervision, retention of practitioners, practitioner resilience and innovation in student supervision. This book will be of interest to supervisors of both practitioners and students and highly relevant to social work academics.

This book was originally published as a special issue of Australian Social Work.

Current Challenges in Supervision in Social Work

Liz Beddoe^a & Jane Maidment^b

^aSchool of Counselling, Human Services and Social Work, University of Auckland, Auckland, New Zealand
^bSchool of Language, Social and Political Sciences, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand

Abstract

In 2012 Australian Social Work published a collection of articles focussed on current research and commentary on Australasian social work supervision, edited by Jane Maidment, Liz Beddoe and under the guiding eye of the journal’s editor Christine Bigby (65(2)). It was the intention of the special section that the contents would “confirm the centrality of positive, learning focussed supervision, while fostering appropriate accountability and best practice in our discipline” (Maidment & Beddoe, 2012). Supervision has long been at the heart of professional development in social work and is a career-long commitment in our profession. Supervision provides a venue for diverse learning activities; a place and space where practitioners can refine their knowledge; develop skills and examine the challenges that are found in everyday practice. This chapter introduces the book and explores some recent developments in the scholarship and research of supervision.

Supervision is the main conduit for critically reflective practice but it is not the only vehicle for such development and it is important that we don’t reify it. It is important therefore that we do not accept it uncritically and in our commentary introducing the special issue in 2012 we argued that it was necessary to interrogate current approaches and to continue to foster research and development. The six articles and the commentary in the special section were well received and have attracted a total of 5980 views (Taylor & Francis website) at the time of writing, we are pleased to note that they have attracted 70 citations (Google Scholar) and we are delighted that they are re-printed here in this collection. Our introductory chapter presents the contributions and introduces two new contributions.

In Chapter Seven in “Social Work Supervision for Changing Contexts”, Liz Beddoe explores the significance of increasing requirements in supervision to be provided by trained and competent supervisors. A perception that there are too few well-prepared supervisors can create a call for more diversity in the modes of delivery of supervision, e.g., interprofessional, peer or group arrangements, as well as the “out-sourcing” to private practitioners. Such modes of supervision carry their own unique challenges and may also meet different needs at different stages of social worker careers. Drawing on the international literature and the author’s own research the advantages and limitations of diverse approaches to supervision are explored.

In Chapter Eight, Jane Maidment provides guidance to field educators and students about how to develop their own practice framework during field placement supervision. In the chapter “Using Visual Cues to Develop a Practice Framework in Student Supervision” creating opportunities to use visual supports for learning in supervision are discussed. The notion of a practice framework is described followed by a discussion about how metaphor can enhance the learning associated with generating the framework. Student and field educator narratives about their experiences of developing a practice framework are included to illustrate.

Supervision: Organisational and Professional Dimensions

Supervision is a core practice activity in the social work profession and as such needs scholarly attention and research in order to build on current knowledge and extend it. In the commentary to the special section we argued that there was a need to “expand conceptual thinking about supervision; encourage innovation, and to capture new research in this field” (Maidment & Beddoe, 2012, p. 163). Six papers from the special issue are contained in this current volume, offering research and conceptual articles which provide original insights and critical perspectives on social work supervision. The contribution of these papers, and the further developments that have been reported in the intervening years, instils confidence that supervision research and development is thriving in Australia and New Zealand and is increasingly research-informed and reflective. Since 2012 further work has been published reporting evidence of a strong supervision research agenda present in Australia and New Zealand. The themes explored in this volume include critical, analytical perspectives on the state of supervision; the influence of practitioner experiences of supervision on supervisor practice; commentary on the politics of supervision and its focus within complex organisational environments; and the challenge to sustainability posed by traditional models of supervision in practice and field education.

We noted in 2012 that the scholarship of supervision was in good heart, evidenced by the number of books published on supervision and professional learning in social work, health and human services. Over the last two years many further publications have promoted supervision as a reflective space in which social work can be claimed and supported. In an era of austerity in social and health services there is some enthusiasm to move beyond a supervision discourse grounded in surveillance and risk management. Supervision has a role to play in all of the spheres in which social workers provide services.

There is a call for social work to stay faithful to its origins in addressing issues of social justice and oppression in the micro, mezzo and macro spheres. Baines, Charlesworth, Turner and O’Neill (2014, p. 6) note that some critical management literature discusses the potential that supervisors in social services can play an important role in “mediating impacts of managerialism on front-line staff and service users by using their organisational and discretionary power to challenge and destabilise the overarching dominance” of managerial practices. This approach explicitly positions supervisors in an organisational buffer zone, building on the mediative aspect of supervision first identified by Richards and Payne (1991) and later articulated by Morrison (2001) as engagement of supervisor and supervisee in exploring the complex and competing personal, organisational and professional agendas. Baines et al. (2014, p. 16) undertook comparative, international intensive case studies of changing work relations and the experience of front-line workers in the non-profit sector in Canada, Australia, Scotland and New Zealand and found that “strong supervision and an agency mission that is replete with social justice values” where managers are aligned with workers and community stakeholders can “buffer the demoralising aspects of lean care work”.

The significance of supervision within our profession is highlighted by findings from two major national studies, one from Australia (Egan, 2012) and the other from New Zealand (O’Donoghue, 2012), both drawing on their doctoral research. Egan presents findings from a mixed methods quantitative study of supervision in Australia in 2007. Egan (2012, p.178) reports that 14.9% (86/579) of her respondents received external supervision and for 67.4% (391/580) their principal supervisor was also their line manager. Egan argues that organisational policy on supervision “requires an acknowledgement of these dual roles and the impact they have on accountability, conflicts of interest, confidentiality, contracts, performance appraisals, and finding the balance between the different functions of supervision” (2012, p. 180). She calls for further research to examine the organisational conditions where such dual roles occur to assess how compatible these arrangements are for effective supervision.

We note here also the contribution of Heather Hair’s work in Canada, also reporting from a doctoral study (Hair, 2013; 2014a; 2014b). Hair (2013, p. 1563) argues that in spite of the many claims made for supervision as essential for social work practice, four important issues have “been investigated and written about repeatedly, but without resolution”. These issues concern the purpose of supervision, its duration over a career and aspects of the training and regulation of supervisors. Hair argues that it is vital that these often contested elements are developed to avoid erosion of supervision.

Supervision is currently recognised as being in a somewhat ambiguous position, on the one hand growing in importance; however this growth is not uncontested in its uneasy relationship with managerial concerns and organisational surveillance (Beddoe, 2010). In arguing that supervision might be situated as a “trade-off” between managerial and professional concerns Jones (2004, p. 12) argues that new public management has disrupted the stability of supervision while Noble and Irwin (2009) suggest that supervision has not been protected from the impact of the decades of restructuring in social work. The emphasis on managerial targets has the potential to reduce the impact of supervision as a professional space for reflection. In this collection Adamson (2012) asserts that supervision is not “politically innocent” and may be harnessed to compliance at the expense of the more clinically focused reflective supervision promoted in the literature. Adamson develops the metaphor of a “swingometer” to illustrate a supervision pendulum, which swings between a focus on social worker development and reflection and accountability driven “risk management”. This is an international issue and in a three-country study Bradley, Engelbrecht and Höjer (2010) noted the predominance of administratively dominated supervision within management-driven social work agencies.

The growth of external supervision noted by many (see for example, Bradley et al., 2010; Bradley & Höjer, 2009), is in part motivated by unease with the power dynamics and bureaucratic nature of internal supervision provided by line managers, but often linked to the lack of suitably trained supervisors (Beddoe, 2010). External supervision may not be a panacea and should not escape critical interrogation and Beddoe (2011a) draws on Bernstein’s notions of “vertical” and “horizontal” discourse to explore the significance of space and place in supervision. Data from a small qualitative study are used to illustrate the nuanced and complex nature in which issues of power and safety are navigated in supervision (Beddoe, 2011a).

Given that there is reported tendency for supervision to mirror the wider organisational climate (Davys & Beddoe, 2010) there is a concomitant need for education to promote reflective supervision to social workers at all levels (Bradley et al., 2010). Noble and Irwin (2009, p. 352) point out that it is not only managers who might promote less reflective styles of supervision, for new management practices require a “new kind of worker; a worker concerned with work performance and work appraisals, work outputs and management systems”. From New Zealand, O’Donoghue (2012) reports how supervisors use their own experience of supervision as supervisees to guide their practice, confirming that practitioners’ own supervision histories influence both positively and negatively on how they do supervision. In the commentary in 2012 we wrote that “the journey to becoming a supervisor is too often merely a rite of passage” without a formal, assessed period of education and training (Maidment & Beddoe, 2012, p. 165). In 2015 education for supervisors remains a priority within the profession and requires further research.

A further significant theme in the international literature addresses the retention of social workers in the workforce and their overall professional well-being. Self-defined resilient practitioners reported that supervision and team support were major contributing features of their sustained practice in social work (Beddoe, Davys & Adamson, 2014). Research on retention over the last decade has demonstrated links between effective supervision and social worker job satisfaction (Guerin, Devitt & Redmond, 2010) and well-being in the workplace (Kim & Lee, 2009; Mor Barak, Travis, Dnika, Pyun & Xie, 2009). In this current volume Chiller and Crisp report on the significance of supervision as an important contributing factor in the decisions of social workers to remain in practice for ten years or more. Practitioners most valued supervision for its “ability to act as a medium through which stresses and concerns can be externalised and explored” (Chiller & Crisp, 2012, p. 436). Adamson (2012) critically examines the resilience concept and argues that this discourse, focusing on the management of emotions, may provide the means for practitioners to negotiate the conflicting agendas of addressing risk, compliance and critical reflection in supervision.

Field Education

The future shape of field education supervision (practice teaching in some countries) is another area for potential development and significant change. Fostering quality learning and being mindful of resource management issues in field education are critical questions in the current milieu. A recent Australian study explored the use of external supervision for students in agencies where no qualified supervisor was present (Zuchowski, 2013). Increasingly accessing quality placements with on-site field educators has become difficult due to resource constraints within agencies and greater competition amongst education providers for placements. Findings from this study illustrated that students did not have a preference for internal or external supervision, despite the fact that external supervision was somehow perceived by students as being less desirable. Instead, the degree to which supervisors were prepared for having students, were able to provide the knowledge needed for practice and could provide support during the placement was seen as more important to students, than where the supervision was sited. (Zuchowski, 2013).

The quality of learning for Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island students on placement and in supervision has been significantly challenged in findings from a second recent piece of Australian social work research (Zuchowski, Savage, Miles & Gair, 2013). Of significant concern in these separate Australian studies was overt racism being demonstrated towards clients and students by practitioners in placement agencies; bullying towards students; and less than optimal learning occurring due to both racist and sexist supervisor attitudes (Zuchowski et al., 2013; Zuchowski, 2013). Recommendations put forward by the authors suggest the urgent need for Indigenous mentors and supervisors in the workplace; acceptance and acknowledgement of different forms of knowledge for practice; and “increasing the cultural awareness and competence of staff in placement agencies and universities” (Zuchowski et al., 2013, p. 59). The serious lack of cultural competence and sensitivity amongst both staff in the agencies, including field supervisors, in this particular research is of significant concern to the profession. These worrying findings clearly demonstrate how Standard 3 of the Australian Association of Social Work Standards of Practice (2013), that of “Culturally responsive and inclusive practice” was not met by p...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Citation Information
• Notes on Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Current Challenges in Supervision in Social Work
• 2. Supervision is Not Politically Innocent
• 3. External Supervision in Social Work: Power, Space, Risk, and the Search for Safety
• 4. Professional Supervision: A Workforce Retention Strategy for Social Work?
• 5. Australian Social Work Supervision Practice in 2007
• 6. Windows on the Supervisee Experience: An Exploration of Supervisees’ Supervision Histories
• 7. Social Work Supervision for Changing Contexts
• 8. Using Visual Cues to Develop a Practice Framework in Student Supervision
• 9. Student Satisfaction with Models of Field Placement Supervision
• Index