Supervision among social care workers: prevalence and effects.

Abstract

Supervision can be defined as ‘an accountable process which supports assures and develops the knowledge, skills and values of an individual group or team. The purpose of supervision is to improve the quality of their work and in social care this should optimize the capacity of people who use services to lead independent and fulfilling lives’(Grey, Field, & Brown, 2010, p.49)Supervision has been widely recognised as a valuable tool to promote best practice and has become a mandatory component among many social care organisations. The aim of this research was, to explore social care workers experiences on supervision within their workplaces. The objectives of this research firstly looked at social care workers knowledge and understanding of supervision and their individual experiences of supervision. The results examined the experiences of supervision which varied greatly between the respondents. A qualitative method was used to collect relevant in depth data. The researcher received rich data on the topic, and this gave the researcher a great insight into the experiences and opinions of supervision among social care workers. The researcher acknowledges that although a great amount of rich information was obtained, it is difficult to make conclusions as to the general population of social care workers, with any confidence, due to the small sample size used.However, the data showed that supervision can be very individual, between the supervisor and the supervisee. The staff who received formal supervision seemed to have different workplace issues that needed to be addressed within in the supervision sessions. Secondly the research looked at the type and frequency of the supervision sessions. Three of the participants received regular individual supervision, but felt that this could be improved on through regular planned sessions, and giving staff an opportunity to discuss their own issues and promote new ideas within the supervision sessions. The results indicated that the majority of staff where receiving some form of informal supervision. The elements of supervision which the participants found to be the most important were on professional skill development, reflection, and time to seek and receive feedback.