Contemporary Practices in Social Work Supervision

Time for New Paradigms?

Trish Hafford-Letchfield, Lambert Engelbrecht, Trish Hafford-Letchfield, Lambert Engelbrecht

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429576041
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Medicine
• Subtopic: Health Care Delivery

This book is a timely review of scholarship in social work supervision; re-examining the state of knowledge, research and practice; and asking if it is time for a new paradigm for the field.

The contributors present a universal paradigm in social work around what we understand social work to be, not only through its practice of supervision but also what this contributes to the challenge of any dominant ideas or ideals about the supervision agenda in an increasingly globalised social work context. Capturing new developments from different regions of the world, the book shows how these can inform critical practice, professional development and well-being, and have a wider impact on accountability, effectiveness and work performance.

The book will be appreciated by people needing or using services, novice or learner social workers, and those responsible for training or educating in supervision knowledge and skills or preparing to take up this important role. With applications for both academic research and practitioner-based learning, this book will help to ensure the best quality and supportive practice within the workforce and community it serves.

This book was originally published as a special issue of the European Journal of Social Work.

Expert understandings of supervision as a means to strengthen the social service workforce: results from a global Delphi study

Les Compréhensions des Experts sur la Supervision comme Mécanisme de Renforcement de la Main-d’Œuvre des Services Sociaux: Les Résultats d’Une Etude Mondiale Delphi

Bree Akesson

and Mark Canavera

ABSTRACT

Learning on how effective social work supervision can strengthen the social service workforce is especially limited in low- and middle-income countries. To address this gap, this paper draws from a global study examining practices and approaches to effectively strengthen the social service workforce. Using a Delphi consensus methodology, the study provided a highly structured means to distil key lessons learned by experts across a range of practice and geographical settings. Over three phases, 43 global experts identified and rated the most effective practices and approaches to strengthen the social service workforce. The findings specific to supervision indicate that most experts strongly agree that access to quality supervision is important. There is also agreement related to the ways in which supervision should be carried out including: individual and group supervision, roleplaying, constructive feedback on practice, and flexibility in the supervisor–supervisee relationship. However, there is still indecision as to whether supervision should be non-hierarchical and egalitarian or, alternatively, directive and regulative. Finally, there was disagreement as to whether supervision should be incentivized. The diversity of participants’ examples suggests that the concept of ‘supervision’ is likely to be subject to highly localized variations that will challenge attempts at creating universally applicable paradigms.

RÉSUMÉ

Les recherches sur l’impact de la supervision efficace du travail social sur l’amélioration de la main d’oeuvre dans les services sociaux sont limitées et surtout dans les pays à revenu faible et intermédiaire. Pour remédier à cet état de fait, cet article s’appuie sur une étude mondiale portant sur les pratiques et les approches pour renforcer efficacement la maind’oeuvre des services sociaux. Utilisant la méthodologie de consensus de Delphi, l’étude a fourni un moyen hautement structuré pour décrire les principales conclusions retenues par des experts ayant une gamme de d’expertise variée et venant d’horizons géographiques divers. Au cours de trois phases de participation, 43 experts mondiaux ont identifié et évalué les pratiques et les approches les plus efficaces pour renforcer la main-d’oeuvre des services sociaux. Les résultats spécifiques à la supervision dans cette étude indiquent que la plupart des experts s’accordent fortement sur le fait que l’accès à la supervision de la qualité est un facteur important. Ils sont également en accord sur la façon selon laquelle la supervision devrait être effectuée, et préconisent : une combinaison de la supervision individuelle et la supervision collective, l’utilisation des jeux de rôle, les commentaires constructifs sur la pratique, et la flexibilité dans la relation entre le superviseur et la personne supervisée. Cependant, les experts demeurent indécis quant à savoir si la supervision doit être non hierarchique et égalitaire ou directive et réglementaire. Aussi, il existe un désaccord entre les experts quant à savoir si la supervision devait être sujette à des motivations ou pas. La diversité des exemples de participants suggère que le concept de « supervision » est susceptible à des variations hautement localisées qui mettront au défi les tentatives de création de paradigmes universellement applicables.

Introduction

A socially just society relies on strong social service systems and quality service delivery from a competent and effective workforce. Together, the social service system and its workforce have the capacity to create a protective healthy environment to ensure the well-being of individuals, families, and communities. The social service workforce broadly includes ‘workers – paid and unpaid, governmental and non-governmental – who make the social service system function and contribute to promoting the rights and ensuring the care, support, and protection of vulnerable populations’ (Global Social Service Workforce Alliance [GSSWA], 2015, p. 5). This definition includes a variety of those working in the social service system, ranging from professional social workers to community-level frontline workers. This diversity of practice contributes to the strength of social service systems around the world (Bess, Lopez, & Tomaszewski, 2011; Davis, 2009; Mwansa, 2012). But it also poses challenges since ‘the functions and activities of these workers are not well described or delineated within or across countries’ (Interest Group on Para Professionals in the Social Service Workforce, 2015, p. 12).

Despite these challenges, the last decade has seen increased global efforts to strengthen the social service workforce. In 2010, Cape Town hosted the first Social Welfare Workforce Strengthening Conference, which served as a catalyst for subsequent country- and global-level initiatives in low- and middle-income countries (LMIC) (Bess et al., 2011). Since Cape Town, a social service workforce strengthening framework was developed (GSSWA, 2010) and the GSSWA was launched in 2013.

A first step towards bolstering the social service workforce is to understand its scope globally. Therefore, mapping exercises have been conducted to better understand the situation of the social service workforce in various countries, especially in LMIC settings. For example, a mapping exercise of social service workforce education and training was conducted among 14 countries in West and Central Africa (Canavera, Akesson, & Landis, 2014). Another study reviewed the state of the social service workforce in 15 countries in Africa, Asia, and Europe (GSSWA, 2015). A follow-up report summarized the social service workforce in eight sub-Saharan countries (GSSWA, 2016). Another research project examined the social service workforce in southeast Europe (Akesson, 2016). While these efforts begin to build an understanding of the social service workforce and related needs, there still remains a weak evidence base for understanding effective practices and approaches to reinforce the social service workforce.

Supervision has been identified as a key component to supporting the social service workforce (GSSWA, 2015, 2016; Kadushin & Harkness, 2014; Roby, 2016). For example, the GSSWA’s (2010) framework recommends to ‘develop or strengthen systems to improve and sustain social service workforce performance’ (p. 1). Specifically, the GSSWA (2016) recognized that supervision needed to be expanded because there is inadequate mentoring and on-the-job training for novice social service workers. Yet, there remains little evidence on effective supervision as a means to improve the social service workforce, which is confirmed by the scholarship on social work supervision (Beddoe, Karvinen-Niinikoski, Ruch, & Tsui, 2015; Carpenter, Webb, Bostock, & Coomber, 2012). Furthermore, the existing supervision research tends to favour perspectives from the Global North, namely the USA and UK (Beddoe et al., 2015; Roby, 2016). For example, Beddoe et al.’s (2015) recent Delphi study to develop an international research agenda on social work supervision had one-third of participants coming from the UK and 71% from English-speaking countries.

The research described in this article attempts to fill this scholarly gap. The following pages report on a Delphi study in which 43 global experts – living and/or working in regions under-represented in the supervision literature including Africa, Middle East and Central Asia, South America and the Caribbean, and South and East Asia, as well as Europe and North America – identify effective practices and approaches to strengthening the social service workforce as related to supervision. The Delphi process is based on the premise that valuable knowledge is gained by supporting processes of reflection by professionals (Dalkey, Brown, & Cochran, 1969; Duncan, 2006; Hasson, Keeney, & McKenna, 2000; Schon, 1983). It provides a highly structured means to distil key lessons learned by experts across a range of settings. It is especially helpful for bringing together specialists and professionals from a variety of disciplines who are not able to communicate and exchange ideas due to geographical and time constraints, such as the international experts included in this study. The Delphi method has been used previously in studies identifying successful and unsuccessful multicultural supervisory behaviours (Dressel, Consoli, Kim, & Atkinson, 2007) and creating a research agenda for social work supervision (Beddoe et al., 2015). Yet the Delphi process has not yet been used to explore how supervision can be used to specifically strengthen the social service workforce.

This paper provides a brief overview of the supervision literature highlighting LMIC settings and thereby identifying the gap that the current research fills. Though definitions of supervision are broad, this paper focuses on the supervision of workers within social service agencies, excluding student supervision during education and training programmes. Using a classic Delphi design, the research distils key expertise on supervision within the context of strengthening the global social service workforce. The findings point to a diversity of understandings and approaches regarding supervision and suggest recommendations for supervision across low-, middle-, and high-income settings.

Supervision around the globe

Just as there are different understandings of social service work that are heavily dependent upon the diverse settings in which practice occurs, there are also a range of understandings of how supervision is enacted in practice (Bradley, Engelbrecht, & Höjer, 2010). According to Beddoe et al. (2015), supervision is ‘a reflective, transformative learning process, enabling and empowering practitioner participation in producing knowledge and as a forum for developing best practice’ (p. 2). They identify supervision as ‘… vital to meeting many professional demands: reflection, the continuing development of professional skills, retention and well-being of practitioners, the safeguarding of competent and ethical practice, and the oversight of casework’ (p. 2).

The increased scholarly attention to supervision over the past decade is demonstrated through the publication of several international research reviews on the topic (Beddoe et al., 2015; Carpenter, Webb, & Bostock, 2013). Furthermore, O’Donoghue and Tsui (2013) have reported a significant increase in publications on social work supervision over the past 40 years. This body of literature tends to feature the varying conceptualizations of supervision within the profession among differing contexts. It also highlights that the empirical basis for supervision remains relatively weak (Carpenter et al., 2012; O’Donoghue & Tsui, 2013), which is especially the case in contexts outside North America and Europe.

The research on supervision that does exist in LMIC settings views supervision as aligned with the goal of strengthening the social service workforce by improving workforce performance (GSSWA, 2016). This goal reflects research indicating that supervision is linked to job satisfaction and retention of social service workers (Carpenter et al., 2012; Juby & Scannapieco, 2007). Furthermore, Beddoe et al. (2015) identified supervision as central to good practice, and Gilbert (2009) found that supervision contributes to competent professional practices that benefit service users.

However, there are still many cases where supervision is neither being recognized nor supported. For example, in Ethiopia, job satisfaction and retention of social workers have not been investigated, nor has supervision been adequately explored (GSSWA, 2016). In research in southeast Europe, even though supervision was identified by social service workers as a key element of effective job performance, it is still considered largely inadequate and therefore ineffective (Akesson, 2016); the exception was in Moldova, where social service workers felt that supervision was relatively effective, although a lack of training and licensing requirements for supervisors reduced effectiveness.

South Africa is one example of a middle-income country where there is evidence of support for supervision. In 2015, participants of the first social work indaba (Republic of South Africa, Department of Social Development [DSD], 2015) prioritized supervision and management in their agenda to support workers. To support social work supervision and management, the indaba called for the following: (1) recruitment and appointment of qualified and registered supervisors and managers, (2) a standardized program for supervision, mentoring, and coaching, and (3) an audit of supervision and management capacity. The resulting Supervision Framework and the DSD’s Supervision Policy will both be rolled out by 2017. South Africa’s movement to support supervision – as a means to support social service workers and therefore benefit service users – serves as a model for other LMIC settings. Nevertheless, there is still a lack of a strong evidence base on key areas of inquiry as related to supervision (Beddoe et al., 2015).

Methodology

Participants

The research project received ethical approval from Wilfrid Laurier University’s Research Ethics Board (REB #4457). Potential participants were required to have expertise in social service workforce development and were recruited through international forums including the Care and Protection of Children Learning Network, Better Care Network, International Federation of Social Workers, International Association of Schools of Social Work, and the GSSWA. Emails were sent to the above organizations and individuals in the authors’ professional networks requesting participant nominations or self-nominations. Purposeful sampling was used to obtain a sample representative of all geographical regions and diverse work experience. Non-native English speakers were encouraged to participate, and two participants submitted responses in French.

As described in Figure 1, 183 potential participant experts were identified through the above described nomination process. Fifty-five individuals agreed to participate, 9 declined to participate, and 119 did not respond. Fifty participants completed Phase 1, 46 completed Phase 2, and a to...