The social work supervisor: Supervision in community, day care and
residential settings
Allan Brown and Iain Bourne
Supervision is the primary means by which an agency-designated supervisor
enables staff, individually, and collectively; and ensures standards of
practice. The aim is to enable the supervisee(s) to carry out their work, as
stated in their job specification, as effectively as possible. Regular
arranged meetings between supervisor and supervisee(s) form the core of the
process by which the supervisory task is carried out. The supervisee is an
active participant in this interactional process.
There are several points arising from our definition that we think merit
further discussion:
- When we refer to supervision we are talking about a relationship
between one person, a supervisor, and another, a supervisee. The supervisor
has been given authority by their employer to supervise one or more
supervisees who are employees accountable to her or him for their agency
work. The concept of accountability is less straightforward and presents
some possible difficulties. Some would argue – with a degree of support from
the new community care legislation – that the worker’s first accountability
is to the service user or ‘client’. Others would say that the first
accountability of a professional worker is to their profession, and yet
others would say that the first accountability is to oneself. We do not
disagree with any of these points about the multifaceted nature of
accountability; we only confirm that the above statement is referring to
agency accountability.
- In our use of the terms enable and ensure we are attempting to capture
the dual nature of supervision, which carries the responsibility both to
ensure that agency policy is implemented – which implies a controlling
function – and a parallel responsibility to enable supervisees to work to
the best of their ability, implying a person-centred caring function. We
consider both these functions to be equally important and inextricably
related to one another in supervision. As in the parallel process of work
with service users in a statutory setting, there are often pressures to be
either the agency controller who pays scant attention to caring and
empowering, or the caring consultant/counsellor who abdicates the authority
vested in the role of supervisor. In a task-orientated, budget-dominated
climate, we think the greater risk is the downplaying of the enabling,
caring function of supervision.
- The reference to individually and collectively is included to emphasise the centrality of the team or staff group in social work and
community care. Whilst much of the discussion here will refer to the
one-to-one relationship of supervisor and supervisee, this almost always
takes place in, and needs to take account of, a team or work group context.
In residential and day care settings this team dimension is an ever-present
reality, and in fieldwork the days of private individualised relationships,
whether with users or colleagues, are becoming a thing of the past. Thus an
essential task of a supervisor is to develop a team and group ethos. This
may be achieved directly through various group events, including for example
team meetings, away days and group supervision (see Chapters 8 and 9), and
indirectly through taking a contextual approach in supervision to the work
undertaken by each individual.
- Arguably the most important point to emphasise is the overall aim of
supervision as being the provision of the best possible service to the users
of personal social services. This apparently obvious fact needs stressing
because it so often gets lost sight of in supervision when agency politics,
interpersonal conflicts, personal ambition, games playing, supervisor and
supervisee preoccupations and other diversions become the main part of
supervision sessions. These dynamics are all normal and ubiquitous, and will
be examined in some detail later in the book. The point to hold on to from
the beginning, and continuously, when thinking about supervision is that the
whole rationale for the agency and its organisational apparatus is to
provide a first-class service for people who need it (or in some cases are
required to have it, in order that they or others may be protected from
harm).
- We need to state right from the beginning that we regard supervision
as an interactional process in which the supervisee is an active
participant. In Chapter 5 we look at the developmental stages in supervision
and the changing needs and relationship according to the supervisee’s level
of experience and expertise. However, even the most inexperienced supervisee
needs to develop – and be helped to develop – the skills and confidence to
be proactive in their approach to supervision.
- The final point arising from our statement on supervision refers to
supervision taking place primarily in formally arranged regular meetings.
The issue here is whether supervision is a specific event, namely the
supervision session, or a process, where something occurs continuously
between supervisor and supervisee(s) in their day-to-day work – or both. We
have had some protracted discussions between us on this issue and, in
particular, where to put the boundary around supervision; these have also
been discussions about setting the parameters of this book. It would clearly
be absurd to restrict our notion of supervision to the single event of the
formal supervision session, when so much of the agenda in supervision
overlaps with other events and contacts between supervisor and supervisee,
many of an informal or crisis nature, and we have no wish to do so. On the
other hand it seems important, as stated earlier, to distinguish supervision
from other aspects of management and from the multifarious tasks of those
who have supervisory responsibilities.
References
Chamberlain, D.B. (1999). Life in the
womb: dangers and opportunities. Journal of Prenatal and Perinatal
Psychology and Health, 14(1-2), 65-83.
Fadiman, J., & Frager, R.
(2002). Personality and personal growth fifth edition. New Jersey:
Pearson Education, Inc.
Neidra, A. & Belfanti, M. (n.d.)
Relationships and you. Retrieved March 20, 2004
Brown, A. and Bourne, I. (1996). The social work
supervisor: Supervision in community, day care and residential settings.
Buckingham: Open University Press. pp.9-11
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