does everyone have regular supervisions?

hi chez when i was on placement i had supervision once a week and i found it really benefical. it heped me reflect on my practice and gave me the confidence that what i was doing was okay.

i read a book by someone on placement about supervision that said that some people  call it snoopervision which cracked me up for ages but bluckily i have not felt that about it yet,

I was wondering if employers were required by law to give employees regular supervisions and if employees benifitted from them?

 I'm not sure about legal requirements but I would be incredibly surprised if it wasn't a part of guidelines and policies -especially in a social work setting. In fact, I wouldn't want to work anywhere that it wasn't offered. It is incredibly valuable and should be demanded if it isn't offered. I don't see how any employer could justify not offering supervision.. 

thanks for your replies.  i have worked in child protection now for 3 years and i have never had a supervision in all the time that i have been there. i'm not sure if i would benifit from having one but wondered if i should have been given one or not.

 i wanted to find out if everyone else got them before i brought it up with my manager. it seems that the only time my manager has a meeting with me is to challenge me negatively about my work. shorly i should be given the opportunity to speak with management and recieve some positive feedback in stead of only negative? or is this the norm when working in social care?

 

that seems really bad chez, Lord Laming pointed to lack of supervision as one of the failings in the enquiry to Victoria Climbies life, maybe you should mention that to your manager. there is also research that suggests that supervision is not only benefical to the workers in terms of morale and reflective practice and accountability but also in terms of giving good service to service users.

i hope you get this one sorted  

 Chez,

 I assume you are a social worker?

If you have really been worker in a child protection agency for three years without supervision that is criminally bad practice. In these somewhat extreme circumstances I would recommend that you join both UNISON and BASW if you are not a member already, and consider approach the Assistant Director, Children's Social Care, under Whistleblowing Procedures.

Post more details or PM me if you want further advice as there isn't much context. I suspect there is a reason you ask this question now!

hiya

     i'm not a social worker i'm a key worker in child protection. i still feel that i should recieve regular supervision but as i am going to uni in sept to get my degree it concerned me as i was unsure if it was normal not to recieve regular supervisions.  are keyworkers required to recieve them? some of my collegues recieve them but others don't.  i feel that it's an issue as i have only had 4 121 with my manager and that was at their request.

thanks for all your replies

i have regular supervision. sometimes it gets cancelled and needs to be re-booked, which i always document and the reason for cancellation. To be fair, i think i am experienced enough now to know when i need to have supervision and will resisit an attempt to re-arrange it. Generally i have supervision every 4 weeks, sometimes this stretches to 6.

Thank you Chez for bringing up this subject which is of particular interest to me at the momemt. I recently qualified as a social worker and am currently doing interviews. During my placements I got supervision weekly and came to understand how crucial it is both to ensure the quality of the service delivered to the client and to support the worker. Because of this I always ask at interviews what the arrangements for supervision are. I have found that statutory agencies tend to place high importance on supervision and offer it at least monthly. Voluntary agencies also say they consider supervision important but appear less committed to offering it regularly. What actually happens in practice I will hopefully soon be in a position to find out!

Having said this, I do think that much of what supervision offers, i.e. advice, support, guidance, education, instruction etc is also available from peers and through informal supervision. Maybe in your workplace, Chez, this type of support is of high quality. What do you think?

What is supervision????  To be fair, my manager and I do book it in, but because of staff shortages and high caseloads, it invaribly means that this is cancelled due to a crisis. However, I know when to approach my manager when I need to talk about a case, and we often have 'ad hoc' supervision in car journeys or on the phone after work, and my manager is brilliant if I ever need to talk about issues. In general, supervison is supposed to be every 4-6 weeks, but in reality the last time I had any formal supervision was about 3 months ago.

hi Kymb it sounds like you have a manager who you get on with and are on a level with which is great however do you record these ad-hoc supervisions and phone calls as the notes from these sessions are supposed to help with accountability should anything go wrong. 

supervision is so important to me on so many different levels. 

I think that these comments are all rather worrying but don't think much of Laming. I think that his report has just lead to more bureaucracy.I don't have formal supervision in my role as school social worker because schools and teachers don't generally have it but I have a fantastic head teacher who I can talk to about anything in fact probably the best I have ever come across in my 25 years of practice.

Good supervision is what is needed and how regular should be not about time but about what the cases that you are doing so there is nothing wrong with adhoc and in fact in lots of ways its better rather than waiting for a particular time.

Reflection is something that you either inately do all of the time or have to learn to do. I have been reflecting since I was a child. I am now 52. Daydreaming is the best form of reflection and so I would advocate afternoon naps as much as possible because it is when you are in those states that your mind becomes uncluttered and logic balances emotion

 

I have supervision once a month but often this gets forgotten (not by me) or put back due to something else appearing to be more important (again not me).  I was finding I was getting very stressed at times and asked on several occasions for further support and finally I get regular supervision.  This has helped immensely in my development.  But I would say that once a month is important but not only that it is the quality of supervision that counts!!  I have a great team and can talk through and offload with them so feel very supportive, but as for case management supervision and recording decisions is sooo important, hope this helps, Tink.

I qualified last June and started my first job in child protection in September 07.  From then until March this year I think I had about 4 supervisions as they kept getting cancelled. When they did happen they were very brief and the supervision didn't actually help me much.  This left me feeling concerned that I was taking the right approach and feeling uncontained.  I regularly raised this with my manager but nothing was resolved until my supervisor left. 

 Now I have a new supervisor and regularly have meaningful supervision once a fortnight (except for when leave gets in the way). These are now shorter as they happen regularly (and we chat in between as well), but it is a good place to record the future direction of cases.

 Don't forget that part of good supervision is to reflect on practice, apply theory and to discuss your future training needs and career development. I have used supervision to identify different type