Involving Young People in Parenting Programmes
SECTION 4
Session 7: Staff Supervision
The supervision of site staff in the IYPP project was felt to be a very important issue because:
- This was an innovative project involving complex models
- Staff co-worked in most of the sites
- Working with more than one family member raised a number of issues
A workshop was held to explore the key components of supervision for work with families. Supervision has been recognised as an important part of service delivery in social care for some time. The origins can be traced back to the use of volunteers in charitable organisations in the nineteenth century (see Peters 1967). There are differing definitions of supervision in a number of professions. A general definition of supervision is suggested by Tony Morrison (2001) as:
A process by which one worker is given responsibility by the organisation to work with another worker(s) in order to meet certain organisational, professional and personal objectives.
(Tony Morrison, 2001)
However, there is a range of types of supervision:
- In house
- From an external agency
- One to one
- In a group
- From a line manager
- Non managerial
- Clinical
See Appendix 3 for advantages and disadvantages of different types of supervision.
Supervision Contracts or Agreements should be devised to provide structure to supervision sessions. The contract/agreement can aid the supervision process. According to the Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) (2003):
Contracts set out what either party can expect from supervision and gives the agency an opportunity to audit and monitor supervision performance. They can also encourage innovative and thoughtful work. (SCIE Practice Guidelines, 2004)
A Supervision Contract/Agreement, should identify:
- Frequency of supervision sessions
- Approximate length of sessions
- Location of sessions
- Main areas for discussion/agenda items
- Confidentiality issues
- Agreement re notes and when they will be produced
- How personal issues will be addressed
- What type of approach will be taken re supervision? e.g. 2 way process/group/peer/line and non line management supervision
- Any other points included by agreement
- Procedure for complaints/reconciling differences
Social Care Institute for Excellence aims to improve the experiences of people who use social care by promoting knowledge and good practice in the sector. SCIE develop resources, the aim of which is to support those working in social care and empower service users. Their guidance on supervision contracts provide a useful framework for Supervision Contracts/Agreements and can be found at www.scie.org.uk
The box below represents a model of supervision for work with families.
Supervision Model
Site staff agreed that the following elements of supervision should be in place:
- Line management – agency driven and dealing with accountability etc
- Clinical/reflective supervision – could be done within line management or as a separate process and with a different person
- Additionally (and depending upon the intervention model) one or more of the following supervision methods should be available:
- Consultancy – for groups, beginning, middle and end of each group, for individual work or workers at an agreed frequency. One of the project sites delivering groups, had consultation sessions at beginning, middle and end points of the group process.
- Planning and debriefing sessions – as co-facilitators of a group or as separate workers working with the same family, as in individual parallel work
- Peer supervision/practice forum – Can be within own agency/service or across agencies