Clinical Supervision?

I have always thought that there is a very strong argument for clinical supervision of social workers, that is supervision that is not provided by a manager who allocates cases, but by somebody who is impartial.

In my early days as a childcare social worker I would have welcomed this, as I was subject to bullying from a manager who wantedme to perjure myself in the witness box. I suddenly felt very alone. I also remember trying to talk through a case with another manager and saying that I was not happy to put the 'pressure on' as he had suggested, he suggested that I was not up to the job! Needless to stay I soon moved on and thankfully have never had such experiences since. Hopefully this kind of practice is rare. Non-managerial supervision would provide a sensible level of checks and balances. It would also provide workers with somebody to advocate on their behalf with managers.

Clinical supervision performed by dedicated experienced workers who no longer wished to work in the field could help workers to look for new ways of doing things, explore their creativity and build on their skills.

Social work can be extremely emotionally draining, stressful, worrying and surely such a level of supervision would provide a support for workers in this often emotional business, Clinical supervision would provide social workers with safe place to speak about how they really feel, to offload, de-stress.

I believe that this would keep down the long-term sickness rate and improve recruitment and retention. It needn’t be costly, one dedicated person could easily provide a regular service to a couple of decent sized teams.

Surely this is just good practice?

Professional status

Here is something from a recent case I was involved with. It made me wonder about the professional status of social workers.

A social worker wanted to return a three-year-old child to his parents after a knee-jerk PPO, the child was desperate to return home, he wasn’t eating at foster carers and was seen running alone in the street and had received bruises while in foster care. The (experienced) social worker could not make the decision to return the child home, although all core group members felt it was appropriate and were offering support. She felt that this was the proper course of action and yet the decision had to be made by her manager and then signed off by the service manager. This was in the middle of the holiday season – so far it has taken eight weeks – the bruises keep occurring.

As a social worker I have been fighting for professional status, which means that I am empowered to take responsibility for some decision making of my own. I act and can justify my actions. It is well known that the further away you are from a case, the more harsh you are likely to be, and as the closest one to the case, the decision should be mine, I know the case, all my manager knows is what I am able to communicate. If my manager therefore disagrees it is not because of their greater knowledge, but because of their fear/prejudice/lack of understanding.

Can somebody tell me if this is common practice these days?

The Care Standards people are very fast to strike off a social worker but I have yet to read about a case where a manager has been struck off for overloading a worker with an unfeasible amount of work, or for providing shoddy, useless supervision, or bullying, hectoring social workers into taking just one more case.

Obvious there is a lot of unexplored depth to this issue, the worker in this case was very experienced and a less experienced worker would require more support ...

Practice Depth

I have just come across the wonderful phrase ‘practice depth’ in an article from Social Work Now from Dec 2007. The authors, Megan Chapman and Jo Field, describe three levels of social work, each deeper and having more impact and creating more change in clients than the last. I just thought that I would share it with you.

Conveyor belt practice, characterised by a professional response to drivers for increased efficiency, getting cases through the system, meeting targets, speedy casework resolution and general compliance with policy and practice guidance.

Pragmatic practice, characterised by compliance with policy and practice guidelines, moderate engagement with family and other agencies, efficient throughput of work; case management and supervision.

Reflective practice, characterised by critical reflection on issues; principled, quality practice decision-making and interventions, depth of analysis’ engagement with families and responsiveness to their needs while maintaining a child protection focus, mobilising supports and resources and access to critical supervision.

My feeling is that should be a layer before all this, going something like this:

Stuck practice, characterised by lack of awareness of policy and practice guidelines, Cases stuck in the system, cases not receiving any kind of clear or planned intervention, no engagement with families because families rarely get seen, or are seen by a different worker every time.

Maybe you can think of more?

Back again

I thought that it was about time I did something about this blog. I have been away for a while with a bit of a heart problem but now I am back and after long and hard deliberation decided to put a link from the website to the blog pages.

I have a new publication out since the last time I wrote, Kids Need, and it seems to be going very well. Just had the royalties from the first year of The Barefoot Helper and that will go into my fun fund. That is a little stash that I use just to enjoy myself with and usually manages to take the family to a festival or two in the summer. This year it will be the Big Chill and the Green Man in the Brecon Beacons. Tickets bought, new wellies required since I gave my last pair away at a festival last year.

There have been many life changes since I last wrote in this blog, some that I still have to come to terms with. Lets see how it unfolds.