Supervision in

Social Work
 In Social Work, mastery of of professional practice
requires a continuous period of learning and doing. As
an arm of administration, supervision affords a crucial
venue for communication and staff interaction at all
levels that are essential to the effective functioning of
agency.

Supervision started off as an administrative

activity, soon supervisors recognized the importance of
its teaching and enabling functions and henceforth
included them as part of their tasks. Thus, supervisors
not only directed the work of students or staff; they
taught students and workers ways of helping people
based on their experiences.

SUPERVISION IN SOCIAL WORK

A.Definition
and Assumptions
Definition
Supervision is a dynamic enabling process by
which individual workers who have direct
responsibility for carrying out some of the agency’s
program plans are helped by a designated staff
member to make the best use of their ability so that
they can do their job more effectively and with
increasing satisfaction to themselves and to the
agency.

DEFINITION
 CHARLOTTE TOWLE defines supervision as an
“an administrative process in the conduct of which
staff development is a major concern.”

In this process, the

supervisor has three
functions:

1. administrative
2. teaching
3. helping

DEFINITION
The 1965 edition of the American Encyclopedia of
Social Work defines supervision as “traditional method of
transmitting knowledge of social work skills in practice from
the trained to the untrained, from the experienced to the
inexperienced student and the worker.”

On the other hand, The 1971 edition of the Encyclopedia

defines supervision as “essentially an administrative
process for getting the work done and maintain
organizational accountability.”

DEFINITION
ALFRED KADUSHIN
contends that the other
definitions are incorrect as
they include only some
aspects of supervision. He
further clarifies that more often
than that, the definitions would
only show the administrative
and educational components
in the function of supervision.

DEFINITION
There is an additional responsibility which Alfred
Kadushin included in the definition and that is the
“expressive-supportive-leadership” function of
supervision.

He thus defines supervisor as “an agency

administrative staff member to whom authority is
delegated to direct, coordinated, enhance, and evaluate
the on-the-job performance of the supervisees for whose
whor he/she is held accountable.”

DEFINITION
In implementing this responsibility, the supervisor
performs administratives, educational, and supportive
functions in interaction with the supervisees in the
context of a positive relationship.

The ultimate objective of supervision is to deliver to

agency clients the best possible service, both
quantitatively and qualitative, in accordance with the
agency policies and procedures. Kadushin, therefore,
concludes that supervisors perform indirect service to
the client.

DEFINITION
Assumptions
1. Supervision aims towards the agency’s control over services
and practice.

a. Supervision always involves intellectual teaching.

b. All supervision has a psychological component, which
includes emotional support, power or use of authority, and
self-actualization.

1. Recognizes the fact that supervision is essentially a function

of administrative leadership which is aimed at:

a. accomplishments of the administrative goals of the

agency rather than therapeutic goals for supervisees;

DEFINITION
 b. fusion of administrative and teaching activities in one
dynamic process; and
c. judicious use of administrative power and authority.

3. Stresses the supervisory process as a learning

process when:
a. there is a acceptance of the learner;
b. there is an orderly process of integration of materials
from simple to complex;
c. there is giving of specific knowledge to ease anxiety;
and
d. social work provision requires basic knowledge in the
social work methods through formal graduate training in
social work.

DEFINITION
ROLES
and Functions
The Roles of Supervision
in Social Work

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

• Supervisor is a mid-position in a social agency or in the
department whose main function is to provide a social
service. Social work supervisor as a member of the
agency team of which are employed to accomplish the
agency’s purpose and function. They have the
responsibilities within an allotted segment of the
agency.

• The supervisor are usually given responsibility for the

some certain number of workers/students. ,and seeing
to the work in the agency of the workers or/and
students gets done and done well, given that they
provide service to clients, workers and students are
enabled to improve their skills to the limits of their ability
at any given stage in their development.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

• The responsibility leads to conclusion that these can only be
accomplished through a combination of administration,
teaching, and helping functions enhanced throughout by the
clear communication

• The supervisor as a middle manager has a role to carry out

the responsible to and helping the those above and below
them in the hierarchy of their agency, utilizing their clients’
needs and problems to help administration function well
towards achieving and finding the solution to the needs and
address problems, using improved through teaching,
stimulating and enabling staff to carry out their responsibility
most effectively.

• The demand are the social work knowledge and ability, and
administrative ability, teaching ability and ability to
communicate clearly, also ability to form a variety of
relationships, patience, enthusiasms and most in the ability to
keep ones’ head when all around them are losing theirs and
blaming them for it.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

The General Role of
Supervision
in Social Work

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

• Be in the Authority. Although authority is part of the position
of a supervisor (that is formal authority), it is important that the
supervisor should acquire respect (that is functional authority)
and not simply enforce it. When this happens there may be
conflict between formal and functional authority, which could
have a negative effect on the successful changeover of roles
from a social worker into a supervisory position.

• Creating Decision Making Style. The supervisor's decision-

making ability is crucial for the effectiveness of his supervisory
practice. It also influences the politics and dynamics of the
organization. To make a meaningful changeover of roles, it is
necessary for the supervisor to keep up to date with the
politics and dynamics of the organization.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

• Building Relationship Orientation. The supervisor has
relationships with the social workers for whom he is
responsible, his own peer group and the management of the
organization. In the changeover of roles the relationships have
to be changed. The supervisor should build a network of
relationships with his new peer group and superiors as soon
as possible to obtain understanding and support.

• Conducting Accountability and Evaluation. The supervisor

has to measure the inputs of the social workers and evaluate
their professional development regularly. This new
responsibility in the role of supervisor may result in tension. If
the supervisor has been trained and has knowledge of
supervision and management, the changeover can take place
with the aid of the necessary knowledge, skills and attitude.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

The Functions of
Supervision
in Social Work
Supervision has a variety of functions and roles but only three
functions of supervision will be discussed below, namely
Administrative, Helping (Support), and Teaching
(Educational) of supervision.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Administrative Function
In order for the agency to function effectively the supervisor has
administrative functions as well as tasks to perform for the benefit
of the organization and other workers at service delivery level, so
that they may be able to function and understand the organization
structure. The supervisor also has administrative responsibility for
determining the organization goals, acquiring resources and
allocating them to carry out programmes (Social Work Dictionary
1980)

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

The administration functions of a supervisor, as defined
Kadushin, include “ planning and assigning work; organizing,
coordinating and facilitating man power and agency resources
available to complete the work; reviewing work performance to
ensure that is adequate done, quantitatively and qualitatively,
based on the agency procedures; placing the worker, acting like a
vertical and lateral channel of the communication and as a
administrative buffer; helping in the formulation of the agency
policy; and facilitating intra-agency coordination.

“The administrative function of social work supervision can be

defined as a process forgetting the work done and maintaining
organisational control and accountability" (Kadushin, 1992)

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

According Botha and Week (1988) they describe administration
as a process of defining and attaining the objectives of an
organization through system of coordinated and cooperative
efforts. The administrative functions of supervision is seen as
including activities such as orienting, planning, leading, allocating,
controlling, delegating, and evaluating from a middle
management position with a view to promoting the quantity and
quality of work of direct service workers and to achieving
organizational goals.

In implementing the administrative function of supervision, the

supervisor organizes the work place and the organizational and
human resources to achieve the administrative objectives in
accordance with organizational policies and procedures.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Supervisor exercises his Administration
functions by:

1. Holding the workers to account for a certain quality and

quantity of production

2. Seeing to it that service to client is adequately rendered with

agency regulations and procedures properly carryout; and

3. Enabling the worker to follow procedures and regulation. )The

supervisor has to clear in his communication to him)

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Helping (Support)
Function
Kadushin (1985) indicates that the supervisor has the responsibility of
sustaining the worker’s morale, helping with job related stress or
discouragement, giving the worker a sense of worth as a professional, a
sense of belonging in the organization, and a sense of security in his or
her performance. Holloway and Brager (1985) suggest that support is a
term used for the effective dimension of supervision; it refers to building
the behaviors that indicate trust, respect, and concern for worker’s
welfare. Austin (1981) identifies element of support as creating a feeling
of approval, developing personal relations, providing fair treatment and
enforcing rules equitably.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

The Helping (support) function of supervisor is described as being
concerned with increasing the effectiveness of the social worker
through decreasing stress that interferes with performance and
increasing motivation and intensifying commitment that enhances
performance. The social worker is expected to provide in the
needs of clients and he does not usually receive appreciation for
his efforts from the clients. In order to be able to provide effective
support, the supervisor must be aware of the factors that
influence the social worker negatively and he must be able to
inform the social worker about it.

The helping (supportive) function of social work supervision

places the focus on a major difference in emphasis between the
role of the social work supervisor and that of supervisors in many
businesses and industries. It is clear that, whether because of
lack of resources, actual or threatened violence, obstacles to
change, or lack of support, stress appears to be found
consistently within social work.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

The Helping (supportive) Function of the
Supervisor
is done by:
1. Supporting and sustaining the worker through stressful
situation.
2. Providing a positive climate of learning
3. Managing the supervisory relationship on the helping way
4. Making sure of what he knows about the people and their
behavior in working with others
5. Helping workers to identify and modify feelings and other
obstacles which are impending their progress.
6. Helping the supervisee deal with job-related stress.
7. Develop attitudes and feeling in the workers which are
conducive to job performance.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Teaching (Educational)
Function
Teaching function, supervisor that is concerned with helping the workers
and students assigned to them to learn what they need to know so that
they can do their assignments effectively. The knowledge, stimulates
thinking are shared to lead out to the new ideas, and grapple by the
workers, encouraging conscious thinking, give workers the opportunity
to discuss their works and appraise it to arrive at decision =s and to
learn helping skills. The supervisor has the responsibility of teaching the
workers content regarding the people, problem, process and developing
self-awareness of personnel with regards to aspect of functioning that
are clearly job related.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Regularly scheduled individual or group supervisory conference is
the primary methodology utilized for teaching in supervision. The
content is the supervisees’ performance. Pre-planning and preparation
are extremely necessary and both the supervisor and the supervisee
engage in the critical analysis of the work submitted by the supervisee in
their supervisory conference.

Educational supervision is a process that deals with teaching the

knowledge, skills and attitudes necessary for the performance of clinical
social work tasks through the detailed analysis of the worker’s
interaction with the client. Educational supervision is directed to a
particular individualized programme of education.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

McKendrick (1988) conceives educational supervision as a planned,
systematized process, based on teaching learning cycle which
comprises established areas of learning need based on formal criteria,
assessment, formulating teaching-learning objectives, selecting and
organizing content, planning, implementing and teaching strategies and
evaluating the outcome process.

Through the educational process of supervision the social worker is

trained in the skills and knowledge that he needs to be able to
accomplish effective interaction with clients.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Carry out Teaching Functions
Teaching functions are carried out through the following:

1. Planning
-the supervisor has to plan work experience for a supervisee which will
give him the opportunity to learn and to progress as a worker

2.Providing a climate of learning

-the supervisor teaches sensitivity to the needs of the worker at both
intellectual and feeling level which will enable the worker to integrate
feeling and intellectual functioning in the practice of social work.

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

Hereunder are some points for effective teaching:

1. Start with familiar and move to unfamiliar

2. Start with the simple and move on to the complex
3. Learning should be done in an orderly progression
4. Repetition reinforces learning
5. Learning by doing increase motivation and provides opportunities for
the correction of misunderstood principles or theories.
6. Recognition of the good work stimulates further learning

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

The following are the conditions by which are necessary to insure
the effective learning in the context of the positive relationship
identified by Alfred Kadushin, people learn best if:

1. They are highly motivated to learn.

2. They can devote most of their energies to learning.
3. Learning is attended by positive satisfaction
4. The learners arte actively involved in the learning process.
5. The content to be learned is meaningfully presented
6. The uniqueness of the learner is considered

ROLES AND FUNCTIONS

B. Types of
Supervision
1. TUTORIAL MODEL

• The most useful model for

workers who are inexperienced
and who like the security of a
relatively close monitoring of their
performance.
• This type of supervision consists
of a supervisor and a supervisee in
a one-to-one relationship.
• This is to guide the supervisees in
their initial and inexperienced
translation of theory into practice.
2. GROUP SUPERVISION
• Has a designated supervisor and a
group of supervisees.
• This model is practiced by agencies
which lacked the necessary number of
supervisors.
• The group meets regularly with the
supervisor with a pre determined
agenda.
• This type of supervision is most
effective if the members of the group has
the similar level or facility of
communication.
3. CASE CONSULTATION
• There is a consultant assigned,
and the worker schedules the
interaction as required.
• Cases are the subject of
consultation
• The worker is in charge of case
decisions, and the consultation is
always restrictive, in the sense that
it must be clear to all parties that
the worker is not bound by the
consultant's views unless he finds
them useful.
4. PEER GROUP SUPER VISIONAL
• Effective form of leaderless peer group.
• All the members of the groups participate
as equaly.
• Process by which persons with the same
rank within an organization help each
other for their mutual benefit.
• The agenda of every meeting is to
determine the mutual agreement.
• Members are not under any obligation to
act accordingly with the ideas proposed by
the group.
5. TANDEM SUPERVISION
• This developed out of the peer-
group model.
• Tandem supervision occurs when
two experienced workers consult
with each other outside of the peer
group
• Decisions are the responsibility of
the individual to whom the case is
assigned, but after a while of
working together, all participants
become acquainted with each
other's situations, and decisions 38
appear to become more
collaborative.
6. THE TEAM
• model consist of varied member
within the agency.
•the members meet on a regular
basis with the agenda proposed by
the members in advance.
•Any member has the liberty to add
the agenda for case discussion.
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C.Models and Techniques
Of Supervision in Social Work
Social Work Supervision and
Social Work Supervisor

Models and Techniques

• Supervision is a process by which individual workers
have a direct responsibility for carrying out some of
agency’s program plans are helped by a designated
staff member to make the best use of their ability so
that they can do their job more effectively and with
increasing satisfaction to themselves and to the
agency.

• Social work supervision is a process which the

supervisor and the social worker interact with each
other in a structured learning situation. The learning
situation is structured in such a manner that the social
worker can be assisted with the development of his
professional skills.

Models and Techniques

• The social work profession has an influence on the practice of
supervision to social workers in terms of the values it
dictates for the relationship between the supervisor and the
social worker as well as the technology it makes available for
problem solving. Due to their professional social work
training supervisors and Social workers share norms, values
and objectives that determine their preferences and
behaviour in supervision.

• Supervision occurs within an agency setting in which the

supervisor serves as the primary teacher in the field whose
aim is to teach the core skills of social work practices, such
as interviewing, listening, observation, recording, assessing
and prioritizing client problems, developing interventions, etc.

• For social work practitioners, effective supervision and

consultation are crucial to continued professional skill
development. Supervisors and consultants provide
opportunities for social workers to discuss ethical dilemmas
and challenging cases, and assist social workers in learning.

Models and Techniques

Models of Supervision and
Consultation in Social Work

Models and Techniques

• Individual model. The individual model is the most
common and traditional mode of supervision, often in
place in employment settings that include a number of
social workers.
• This type of supervision occurs one-on-one, with each
social worker having an assigned supervisor, and
regular meetings between them.
• Its main benefit of the individual supervision model is
having the full attention of one’s supervisor for a
dedicated period of time, providing a safe environment
in which to explore the supervisee’s questions,
challenges, and strengths.
• Social workers should also be aware that due to the
. intense, one-on-one format of individual supervision,
there is potential for the supervisee to feel intimidated
by or incompatible with the supervisor.

Models and Techniques

• Peer Group Model. A group of social workers, with no
hierarchical relationship established between them,
meet regularly to consult one another on practice
issues.
• This model allows all group members to both listen to
others (as a student) and offer their own experience as
guidance (as a teacher), which can be a valuable
experience.
• The peer-group model also offers the opportunity for
members to learn and grow from group dynamics.
However, as with any group, a peer-group runs the
risk of power hierarchies evolving, wherein more
experienced or skilled group members might tend
toward the role of supervisor over others. It allows
everyone to participate as equals in shaping the group,
and providing help and support to one another.

Models and Techniques

• Facilitated Group: Supervision is one in which a
designated supervisor works with a group of
supervisees at the same time. This can be difficult for
the supervisor, as she must act in her supervisory role
and as a group facilitator at the same time.
• The benefit of this model is, the members can learn and
grow from group dynamics, from one another, and from
the supervisor’s practice examples and ways of working
all at once.
• The group format provides opportunities for role play
and facilitated discussion not available in an individual
model. It is also less time-consuming and less
expensive.
• This model also means less time overall for each
supervisee. Finally, facilitated groups should have a
high level of mutual trust so that supervisees feel safe
sharing and learning together in the group

Models and Techniques