The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work Supervision

Kieran O'Donoghue, Lambert Engelbrecht, Kieran O'Donoghue, Lambert Engelbrecht

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367250867
• eBook ISBN: 9781000387292
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Work
• Index: Social Sciences

This handbook provides a comprehensive overview of social work supervision internationally and presents an analytical review of social work supervision theory, practice, and research.

Presented in seven parts:

• International perspectives
• Supervision settings
• Roles, responsibilities, and relationships
• Models and approaches
• The interactional process
• Leading and managing supervision
• Emerging areas

The book examines how supervision contributes to the well-being, development, and practice of social workers. It also sets the agenda for the future development of social work supervision internationally. Social work supervision is examined across countries, practice settings, and in terms of participants' roles, relationships, and responsibilities. Contributors show how and why social work supervision is integral to social work and the rich diversity of ways supervision can be practiced.

Bringing together an international team of social work supervision scholars, researchers, supervisors, and practitioners, this handbook is essential reading for social workers, supervisors, managers, policy advisors, and professional leaders.

Part I

International perspectives

1
Developing reflective models of supervision

The role of the United Kingdom professional association

Godfred Boahen, Luke Geoghegan, and Alistair Brown

This chapter explores models of supervision adopted by members of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW) in response to the “triumph of managerialism” in UK supervision. It starts with a discussion of the role of professional associations, positioning peer-to-peer reflection, and supervision as one element of their knowledge generation functions. This contextualizes an exploration of the changing nature of supervision in the UK. It is argued that the development of “UK Supervision Policy” (BASW 2011) and member-led communities of practice (Wenger 1998) for peer-led and group supervision were responses to the dominance of managerialist approaches in the UK. Attention will be paid to the role of supervision in human rights-based practice. While most of the literature on supervision addresses concerns about the frequency, quality, and effectiveness of supervision (Wilkins et al. 2018), there is a gap about how social work professional associations – custodians of professional identity (Boahen and Wiles 2018) – can provide alternative models to performance and risk management.

Professional associations: Knowledge generation and reflective practice

While there is a consensus that globally, social work supervision has taken a managerialist, performance management turn (Engelbrecht 2013, Tsui 1997) which is not always desirable, the role of professional associations in providing reflective models remains unexplored. O’Donoghue et al. (2006) and O’Donoghue et al. (2005) respectively surveyed members of the Aotearoa New Zealand Association of Social Workers for their experiences of supervision. In the former study, it was noted that one of the “best things” about supervision, according to survey respondents was “interactional processes (e.g. ‘being listened to,’ ‘working with the whole person,’ providing ‘perspective, guidance and clarification’), receiving feedback, and a strengths-based process.” (O’Donoghue et al. 2006, p. 83). Taken from the perspectives of employees of the British Association of Social Workers (BASW), this chapter extends this latter finding, and explores how member-led interactional processes within the professional association provides reflective supervision.

Professional associations are collectives of people with shared expertise who organize to represent their mutual interests. One of these is supervision, which is necessary for effective practice and social workers’ wellbeing (Wilkins 2019). Professional associations are linked to professionalization, whereby occupational groups are formed through the activities of individuals who lay claim to their unique specialities, or for their political recognition as legitimate representatives of them (Freidson 2001). The fluidity of processes of professionalization has been recognized since the post war period – “professional does not earn his status once and for all. Rather, it is a continuous process in which his [sic] claims to competence are being tested every day in interaction with others and he can lose the respect of others.” (Bucher and Stelling 1969, p. 4). This highlights the role of members in maintaining their professional standards through their interactions, drawing attention to the role of supervision.

Freidson (1994, 2001) suggested that professional associations can engender (high) quality standards in the delivery of public services. This arises from their own self-interest. In order to lay claim to specialization and hence foreground their legitimacy, associations must ensure that their members are skilled. This can be achieved through formal and informal avenues – for instance through dissemination of literature and through their networking and physical interaction, knowledge can be exchanged (Carter and Mahallati 2019). Seeing themselves as custodians of professional standards, associations may consult their members to determine practice benchmarks, communicate these (internally and externally), and provide training or continuous professional development.

In the UK, BASW (The British Association of Social Workers) is the professional association of social workers and currently has some 20,000 members. There are national offices in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Members provide formal and informal supervision through their interactional processes, and they seek to represent the professional status of social work.

In the literature it is posited that professional associations desire professional status, however how this is achieved reflects how power is exercised over them. Evetts (2003) distinguishes between organizational and occupational professionalism. In the former, professionalization is initiated or imposed by external and powerful actors – for instance governments or regulators – to “control” the profession and set (high) standards. This can entail central regulations about training standards and supervision. As an example, in England (General Social Care Council 2004) the social work regulator stipulated that employers had to provide supervision to staff, and employees were obliged to participate. More desirably, occupational professionalism can arise from a quest by group members to improve professional standards. In the latter framework, it is members of the occupational group that establish the standards, and this implies more democratic ownership and accountability by the members over the process of professionalization. Historically, BASW has experienced the two models of professionalization discussed here.

BASW was formed following the amalgamation in 1970 of professional associations which represented discrete areas of social work practice. The impetus for merger was the 1970 Local Authority Social Services Act (LASSA), which established generic social work practice in England under Social Services Departments. The legislation was a move by central government to improve professional standards through increased regulation and the elevation of the status of social work as a profession (Harris 1970). Throughout its history, BASW has responded to such policy initiatives through its own programs for professionalization. These have included development of practice standards, such as a Code of Ethics (BASW 2018), Professional Capabilities Framework (BASW 2018), and practice frameworks for autism and learning disability (BASW 2019, a, b). Historically, BASW has demonstrated another function of professional associations – communities of practice – as forums for peer-led and informal supervision.

Professional associations and supervision: communities of practice

Professional associations can also promote knowledge generation through their activities as communities of practice – “…groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an on-going basis” (Wenger et al. 2002, p. 4). Situated within a social learning perspective, the concept of communities of practice (CoP) proposes that individuals within a group gain knowledge and expertise from meaning making through their interactions. Wenger (1998) suggested that interactions, engagement, and participation of members within the group lead to the creation (and negotiation) of explicit knowledge and development of a tacit understanding and shared world view. Through “engagement in action, interpersonal relations, shared knowledge, and negotiation of enterprises, such communities hold the keys to real transformation” (Wenger 1998, p. 85). Due to the emphasis on collective learning and knowledge transmission (Jagasia et al. 2015), models of CoPs are widely adopted in social work, for instance in reflection (Staempfli et al. 2016) and in virtual communities of practice (Adedoyin 2016). The theoretical framework can also explain the work of professional associations that seek to enhance the knowledge of their members, for example, through the development of practice standards and other forms of learning such as supervision (Weller 2017). Within BASW these communities of practice exist in several forms. There are member-led Special Interest Groups; Policy, Practice and Education Groups; or groups that meet to reflect and provide peer-to-peer supervision. It is argued that the communities of practice on supervision have developed in response to the UK policy context of managerialism – in the face of this, members meet to provide each other with the reflective supervision that they desire but which is not provided by their employers. This thesis is developed further in the next section through an exploration of the history of supervision in the UK.

Supervision in UK social work: Historical overview of models

In the UK, the practice of supervision has been shaped by the policy, organizational, and practice contents, exemplifying global developments (O’Donoghue and Tsui 2012). Following Tsui (1997), we argue that there are historically distinct models of supervision in the UK: the casework / psychoanalytic period from post-war to the late 1970s–80s; the rise of managerialism (1980s–2000); and the “the triumph of managerialism” (2000–present). These periods are not neatly delineable – for example, psychoanalytic models of supervision are still in use in some settings (Bower 2005). However, being dominant models at the time, they shaped social workers’ experiences of supervision.

Social work is a registered profession in the UK, meaning that to practice, a formal social work qualification and registration with a national regulator is required (Bamford 2015). Often described as “statutory,” it involves managing conflicts between competing human rights (Harms-Smith et al. 2019), needs-led resource allocation, and making fine ethical judgements (Banks 2008). Accordingly, supervision is not simply an optional dialogue between social workers but must often address life-changing issues. Historically, different models have been dominant, starting with the case work approach, which is discussed next.

The case-work and psychoanalytic period

From the post-war period until the 1970s / 80s, case work and psychoanalytic models dominated social work practice. Key influences were (Perlman 1957), (Biestek 1957), and (Rogers 1951). The focus on individuals was complemented by groupwork (Bion 1961), and these also influenced the nature of supervision. However, psychoanalytic models came under increasing criticism. First, there was a change to the organizational context of supervision. The Seebohm report in England and its corollary in Scotland, the Kilbrandon Report of 1964 (Turbett 2018), resulted in the creation of Social Services Departments delivering generic social work through local authorities. Social work also moved away from a series of specialisms delivered from different agencies to a generic profession working from one agency (Bamford 2015). These developments undermined clinical social work undertaken in psychoanalytic settings and with this, models of psychoanalytic supervision. Alongside this, the case work approach was increasingly criticized by academics. In “The Client Speaks,” Mayer and Timms (1970) noted the lack of client involvement in casework approaches. Brake and Bailey (1980) also argued that social work should seek to change social structures to make them more equitable instead of assisting people to adapt to them. The casework / psychoanalytic model was undermined and with it, psychoanalytic models of supervision, with the discussion shifting from the need for individual change to the need for structura...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• List of contributors
• Introduction: Supervision in social work
• PART I International perspectives
• PART II Supervision settings
• PART III Roles, responsibilities, and relationships
• PART IV Models and approaches
• PART V The interactional process
• PART VI Leading and managing supervision
• PART VII Emerging areas
• Index