Supervision In Social Work

2952 Words12 Pages
My statement of intent for this assignment is to demonstrate the importance of supervision in the social work practice, with supporting arguments. The authors clearly illustrate that supervision is key to achieving positive outcomes in social work and must be a fundamental practice if organisations are to provide quality of service to service users. Supervision either being direct or indirect is a means of reflection based on work load management and is therefore a channel used to monitor a social worker’s development thereby maintaining motivation and satisfaction of the job. The authors state that the deaths of Victoria Climbie’ and the more recent Peter Connelly would have been avoided had there been adequate and effective supervision. The word supervision according to Kadushin (2002) is derived from the Latin super meaning over and videre simply being to watch or to see. Kadushin hence defined a supervisor as an overseer, one who is responsible for another person’s quality of work that he or she watches over. Supervision as noted by Kadushin (2002: 19) is about the interaction between the ‘superior ‘which is undertaken in privacy and the author defines the supervisor as an agency administrative staff member to whom authority is given to direct policies and procedures. Kadushin (2002) further adds that supervisors are not directly in position to offer services to agency clients but they do indirectly have an impact on the level of service given and as such direct the supervisees. In doing so, Kadushin (2002) suggests that supervisors are able to sustain worker morale as they are able to give feedback to supervisees thereby helping them with any job related discouragement or less satisfaction and then giving them a sense of belonging and their performances being given professional credit. Wilson et al. (2008: 23) note that ‘supervision has historically been
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