Supervision for Forensic Practitioners

Jason Davies

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2015
• eBook ISBN: 9781317567257
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

Forensic practitioners work in a diverse range of settings, with a wide variety of groups and with a large number of agencies. Their work, whilst rewarding, is challenging, demanding and often undertaken in highly stressful situations. Ensuring that the workforce is trained and supported is essential in order to maintain skilful, knowledgeable, responsive and effective practitioners. Whilst training, self-directed learning and peer support all play a role, the need for supervision for practitioners is increasingly being recognised.

This text is aimed at all those working in forensic settings who have direct contact with the perpetrators and victims of crime and is written for both those new to supervision and those with many years' experience. Specific chapters focus on knowledge and skills for the supervisor and the supervisee and on those responsible for developing supervision systems for staff groups. This includes a focus on risk, boundaries, approaches to learning and the evidence base for supervision practice. Attention is also given to developing supervision competence and combatting harmful or 'lousy' supervision. The core text is supplemented by ten Special Topics addressing single issues commonly faced in supervision practice, such as ethical issues and reflective practice.

The combination of comprehensive chapters and a focus on specific issues through ten Special Topics provides those involved in supervision with an essential resource. This book is essential reading for supervisors, students, managers and researchers who are involved or interested in the supervision process.

1 An introduction to practice supervision

Forensic practice is a rapidly developing specialism that covers a very wide range of application. Forensic practitioners may find themselves working in a diversity of settings such as custody, hospitals and the community; with a wide variety of groups such as children and adolescents, adults, offenders and victims of crime; and with a large number of agencies for example the courts, police, health service, prisons, probation and the voluntary sector. Despite this plethora of practice settings and services, the challenge of delivering high quality provision, in ‘high-stakes’ and often high-pressured situations is a common feature. In order to meet this challenge, there is a need for practitioners to be highly competent and able to work safely and effectively. Forensic practitioners need also to ensure that their performance and wellbeing are maintained across the course of hours, days, weeks, years and decades! Given this enormous commitment expected from staff, there is a need to ensure that sufficient attention is paid to the greatest resource in forensic settings – the ‘human capital’, i.e. all those who make up the workforce. Investment is needed to provide education, training, guidance as well as practical and emotional support for staff whilst developing and sustaining functional teams and responsive services.

Becoming an effective forensic practitioner requires a complex blend of knowledge, skill, self-awareness, responsiveness and on-going learning. For those new to this area of work and those with many years of experience, a range of mechanisms will be employed to develop and maintain skills, knowledge and ability. These are likely to include access to training and opportunities for self-directed learning. However, whilst such learning is a necessary element, the absorption of knowledge and information is not all that is needed for safe and effective practice. In addition to ‘collecting’ taught knowledge, is the task of learning from experience and integrating these two. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of practice supervision and to ‘set the scene’ for the remaining chapters of this book. Therefore, the following pages contain several references to other chapters in this book where ideas and evidence are presented in much more detail.

For the purposes of this book, a pragmatic approach has been taken to the definition of a forensic practitioner as, to the best of my knowledge, this ‘collective noun’ has not been previously used. A forensic practitioner is taken to be anyone working in settings in which they are in direct contact with the perpetrators or victims of crime. Thus the definition would include police and prison officer/custodial staff; a wide range of support staff (e.g. healthcare support practitioners in forensic mental health settings; support practitioners employed in approved premises as used by probation; voluntary and third sector staff working in projects such as domestic violence support) and formal graduate or post-graduate training in a registered profession such as nursing, social work and psychology. For some, identifying yourself as a forensic professional will be easy as ‘forensic’ forms part of your title (forensic psychologist, forensic psychiatrist, forensic social worker) whilst for others this identity will be new! This broad definition means that individual consideration will be needed when reviewing this text to consider how the ideas might apply to you in your role. Additionally, the term ‘client’ has been used to denote all those within or accessing services. This would include prisoners, inmates and convicted offenders subject to probation and patients within forensic mental health services.

The last 30 years has seen significant developments within the field of practitioner supervision, especially in the areas of therapist training and in mental health settings. For example, within the field of nursing, a paper by Cutcliffe noted that, in 2005, supervision has been present for over two decades in the UK and longer elsewhere (Cutcliffe, 2005). Over this time, and especially within the last decade, the literature on supervision has expanded greatly, reflecting the growing interest in and focus on supervision. In addition to the huge number of journal articles, there are now a number of specialist books which draw upon research and best practice guidelines to provide a generic reference for the supervisor or supervisee (e.g. Beddoe and Davys, 2010; Bernard and Goodyear, 2014; Milne, 2009; Scaife, 2013), or explore supervision from the standpoint of a particular professional group (e.g. Bond and Holland, 2011; Fleming and Steen, 2004). Therefore, it is reasonable to conclude that supervision is a rapidly growing field of practice and research (White and Winstanley, 2012) and, as argued by Fowler (1996a), in relation to nursing practice, has the potential to be ‘one of the most powerful tools for nursing practice development’ (p. 47). In comparison, a focus specifically on guidance for those engaging in supervision or in establishing supervisory practice, training or undertaking supervision research within forensic practice is very limited. For example, a simple search of the literature using PsycINFO with the terms ‘supervision’ in the title and (‘forensic’ or ‘prison’ or ‘offend’ or ‘custody’ or ‘secure’ or ‘DSPD’) in the abstract between the dates of 2000 and February 2014 revealed only 18 publications in English during this time. Of these, two were dissertations and five were chapters in books. As noted by Day (2012), this is surprising given the ethical, legal and practice issues that arise on a daily basis within forensic settings.

Towards a definition

An important starting point is to consider a definition for practice supervision especially as the term ‘practice supervision’ is not in common use, whereas phrases such as ‘clinical supervision’ and ‘managerial supervision’ are. Although a somewhat obvious starting place, providing a clear definition is necessary to avoid the confusions that can arise when individuals use the term (Freshwater, Walsh and Storey, 2002) and the assumptions that there is already some shared meaning that is used by all (Shanley and Stevenson, 2006). In the allied area of ‘clinical supervision’ the possibility for ambiguity and confusion is partly due to there being ‘as many written definitions of clinical supervision as there are published books and papers on the subject’ (Bond and Holland, 2011, p. 13). Therefore, a clear definition is important not only for practice convenience but also as a foundation for research (e.g. Hyrkäs, Koivula and Paunonen, 1999; Kilminster and Jolly, 2000).

Whilst there is much debate in the literature about the definition of supervision, it would appear that there are common aims and values underlying clinical supervision. Supervision is seen as an important factor in delivering safe and effective services (e.g. Department of Health, 1993), and to support professional development and lifelong learning in order to maintain standards and develop care (e.g. Department of Health, 1999). Day (2012), noted that supervision should be framed as a formalised, rational and a goal directed enterprise, with Hyrkäs et al. (1999), stating that any definition of supervision should comment upon the goals, process and participants of supervision. The multiple functions of supervision are neatly captured by Inskipp and Proctor (1993) who discuss the formative, normative and restorative functions of supervision. These aspects, which concern training/education; benchmarking and ethics; and emotional support, are considered in more detail in Chapter 4. However, in meeting these functions, it is critical that supervision should remain focused upon its key purpose – how will supervision enhance practice and/or the service being delivered and positively impact on those receiving the service. This can be operationalised in a simple way – how does supervision contribute to ensuring that clients receive safe, appropriate and responsive services.

Authors and researchers have adopted various approaches in their attempts to establish a definition. Although these concern ‘clinical supervision’ they are helpful to acknowledge. For example, Milne (2009) attempts to use a ‘precision’ framework in order to arrive at a definition. Although similar in many ways to definitions already in existence, what Milne does is to explicitly state what supervision is (and is not), how it is practised, what its functions are and how these aspects can be measured. This, he argues, provides a foundation for research and investigation into supervision. Others (e.g. Scaife, 2013, pp. 3–10) present a range of definitions and explore the functions that supervision might serve before listing characteristic features found in supervision. For the purposes of this text a simple and inclusive definition will be used which draws upon the definitions and discussions of Bond and Holland (2011); Milne (2009) and Scaife (2013). Thus for this text, practice supervision is defined as:

A formalised relationship (one to one or group) in which regular, protected time is allocated in which a trained supervisor supports, develops and evaluates the practice of the supervisee through the use of a range of methods and techniques. The primary outcome for supervision is improved service provision. Thus supervision is focused on competence, ethical practice, quality and the emotional impact on the practitioner (the formative, normative and restorative functions).

The words in italics need to be considered in a little more depth in order to help understand the nature of the supervision relationship as distinct from other relationships (which may resemble practice supervision in a number of ways but whose function is limited to particular purposes, e.g. teaching, support or management).

Formalised – a defining feature of practice supervision is that the relationship has an agreement in place which defines:

(a) clear goals and purpose;

(b) the format of supervision;

(c) where and when supervision will take place;

(d) how records will be kept; and

(e) how issues such as confidentiality will be managed.

Regular and protected time is a cornerstone of the formality of supervision and it is this aspect (as we will explore in Chapter 9), that requires organisational effort and structures as a foundation for this.

Trained – being a practice supervisor requires a set of skills and competencies over and above those necessary to do the job that is being supervised. Although there is a long history of individuals becoming practice supervisors because of their position or their length of service/experience, such a crude proxy for supervision competence is inadequate for undertaking this specialist role. As we will consider in Chapter 10, training supervisors and supervisees for the task of supervision is an important undertaking.

Practice – in our definition above, ‘practice’ refers to the work undertaken by the supervisee. Depending on their work role this may include a wide range of activities such as providing clients with skills training, practical support, advice and guidance; delivering individual or group therapy; escorting duties; presenting evidence to courts or tribunals; teaching and research.

Range – the ability to respond to the nature and needs of the supervisee and their practice requires the supervisor to be skilled in the application of a mul-titude of methods and techniques including reflection, challenge, exploration and teaching. This will be considered further in Chapters 5 and 7 and Special Topic 10.

Outcomes – the ultimate purpose or ‘holy grail’ for practice supervision is the impact it has on the actions of the supervisee and thus the positive effect on the client or task. Therefore, the content of the supervision session should have a tangible link to practice discernible through the conversations held – there should be a clear link back to the practice setting. As we will see in Chapter 4, there are many models we can use to guide supervision and help the supervisor and supervisee maintain this focus.

It is important to note that in the definition of ‘practice supervision’ provided above, the idea of the supervisor as a ‘more experienced practitioner’ is not included. This is a departure from many definitions for supervision which include this notion. In other definitions the focus of supervision is on students or trainees or there is an implicit or explicit argument that, for other practitioners, supervision is based on a power differential. Whilst these elements often and perhaps usually are the case, the definition of practice supervision is intended to cover both novice and experienced practitioners and to include the meetings between peers (see Chapter 3). Others have excluded such practice by labelling these as consultation or supervision-consultation. Another feature of the above definition is the focus on service provision which may be clients (people using the service) as in most definitions but also includes tasks. This broadening allows work other than that relating directly to clients to form part of supervision and reflects a move away from the therapy/nursing/social care origins of many definitions of supervision. Although you may choose to use a different definition, it is important to agree a definition between yourself and your supervisor and ideally with the service as well.

Supervision often has an element of practice oversight and monitoring, however this needs to be balanced against supervision being a personal learning forum (e.g. Beddoe and Davys, 2010). This issue is discussed further in Chapter 5.

Supervision is not therapy or counselling

In trying to identify a...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Issues in Forensic Psychology
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Foreword
• Using this text
• 1 An introduction to practice supervision
• 2 The emerging evidence base for practice supervision
• 3 Supervision types, forms and tasks
• 4 Supervision models and frameworks
• 5 Approaches to learning in supervision
• 6 Being supervised
• 7 Core skills and knowledge for supervisors
• 8 Managing risk and boundaries through supervision
• 9 Developing supervision in forensic practice Structures, systems and audit
• 10 Supervisor and supervisee training and development
• Special topics
• Author index
• Subject index