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?