Abstract
The book seeks to answer the essential question ‘Do we need to act in the same way we have practiced for over 100 years as a profession, or do the social changes call for new ways of thinking, acting, and practicing’ (p. 44). The authors acknowledge current global debates about colonialism, decolonisation and neo-colonisation. They write that ‘the way Western professional social work has been transported and implemented in colonies and newly created independent nation-states has attracted serious concerns, including professional imperialism, neo-colonialism and continuation of the hegemony by the West’ (p. 32). It is excellent to see these debates set as background to research on supervision because they inevitably inform supervision encounters in all contexts. A salient observation in the early part of the book is that there is a complex balance between public assistance and social control, and the book argues that social work has failed to meet its reform and social justice agenda in part because of those external forces.
A further challenge is that social workers and their practice contexts (like their clients) are dynamic. In addition to the various permutations of gender, sexuality, culture, ethnicity and faiths, there are early career and more experienced social workers; urban, rural and remote contexts; statutory, NGO-for-profit, not-for-profit and faith-based practice contexts. Social workers evolve and grow over their careers. The purposes of supervision may differ depending on the context: some jurisdictions require active and regular engagement with supervision to maintain professional accreditation. Changing technologies will also create new opportunities, structures and forms of supervision, just as each brings new ethical complexity. Cultural contexts will vary, and even the way supervision as a word or concept is understood must be carefully critiqued and even reconsidered.
It is in this dynamic, and even chaotic, environment that this book seeks to find order and structure and to develop a viable taxonomy of supervision. However, human beings are messy. In social work, the worker is the tool, and the worker is expected to bring their whole selves to their work; indeed, one of the purposes of supervision is to help the worker refine and develop their understanding of their tool (i.e., themselves) so that they avoid disagreeable things like countertransference. Navigating those awarenesses and boundaries is inevitably an art rather than a science since facilitating such understanding (and accountability) is an almost infinitely complex undertaking. The supervisor draws on their own life experiences as well as their formal education and professional experiences, considers context and encounters the supervisee’s being (to use the authors’ words). It is in the nexus of this complex hermeneutic that something called supervision occurs.
The human messiness of supervision (and for that matter, social work practice more generally) is captured by such notions as practice wisdom, eclecticism and the being of supervisees, the integration of the personal and the professional. I found the discussion of practice wisdom most engaging, in part because this is the space where we move from science and its lists of themes to art. Practice wisdom is ‘a mix of complex factors such as the worker’s being, practice and life experiences, learning and cultural upbringing. It is difficult to dissect and explain it, but one can see its use and result’ (p. 193). We may not be able to define it, but we know it when we see it. These notions highlight once again the complex balance between social work science, with structured theories, approaches, paradigms and models, and the art of applying this science in a contextual, congruent and life-affirming way.
In the final chapter, the authors return to answer their research question. They write, ‘Professional supervision in social work is practiced with great variation, from a mix of quality supervision to little or no supervision. However, it has great potential and is emerging as its own independent field of practice…’ (p. 243). The chapter finds that professional supervision is well-established in most social work training programs and clinical practice settings. However, beyond those contexts, professional supervision is valued and used inconsistently and varies greatly in different settings. The authors suggest that (a shocking) 40% of social workers do not have professional supervision. Neoliberalism, new managerialism and privatisation have greatly impacted agency social workers; more non-professionals are being recruited to manage professional social workers, which has negatively impacted opportunities for professional supervision within agencies. One positive result is the innovation of private practice and external supervision. To address the lacuna of professional supervision, the authors propose that awareness raising, training sectors, professional bodies, organisations and legislatures, employee unions and social workers themselves all have roles to play in increasing access to professional supervision, not merely to advance the interests of social workers but to benefit agencies and clients, and presumably the global profession itself.
The book is mostly descriptive rather than analytic, and it is not possible from the way the study was designed to consider what works best, or even what works. However, whatever the context and the stage of the career, it invites practitioners to reflect on how they engage with professional supervision, either as supervisors or supervisees. How do our practice contexts enable, support or prevent access to supervision, support and professional development? These are worthwhile questions in a dynamic, evolving and sometimes messy profession. This book will be useful not only to social workers who provide supervision but to educators and to social work practitioners more generally as they seek to make the most of the supervision experiences.
