Family Early Help
Supervision Frequency
All staff should receive monthly supervision from their line manager. Individual teams will also have additional supervision spaces, including reflective group supervision, peer supervision and group sessions with clinical colleagues. Please check with your line manager what the approach is for your team.
Supervision is a constant supportive process and should never be limited to one monthly supervision. All line managers should be checking in with workers regularly as part of a supportive and helpful relationship. This should be guided by the workers needs and regularly reviewed as part of contracting and recontracting.
Supervision Template
Here is a generic Family Early Help supervision template to help ensure supervision is normative, formative and restorative. Your service may have a supervision template that it prefers to use and you should check with your service manager. You should of course tailor the template for whether you are supervising a worker or a manager. With thanks to Shabnam Ahmed for sharing this template with us
Family Early Help Supervision template
Supervising Remotely
Post-COVID, supervisions should return to face to face as the norm. There may be occasional times when this is not possible, but these should be the exception not the rule. This is a helpful guide from Research in Practice on things to consider if you are supervising remotely
This podcast offers useful, reflective look at how to make sure virtual supervision stays helpful, purposeful and containing during COVID
Reflective Questions about Casework for Supervision
This set of reflective questions might be a helpful frame for reflecting on the help we give through different lenses, particularly in discussions about casework.
Reflective Supervision - Learning Modules
Research in Practice have a series of short online learning modules to support first time supervisors to ‘learn the art and the craft’ of supervision. They are free to access.
Modules “your development”, “the lived experience of children and families”, “emotions, relationships and resilience” and “supervision” are highly recommended. All of them are a beautiful compliment to RF and offer you a wide range of tools to apply in supervisory spaces, as well as consider your own supervisory style.
https://practice-supervisors.rip.org.uk/
Tools to Support Supervision
As well as using the Resilient Families tools and ideas in supervision, here are some tools and resources to support you in creating a systemic, reflective, helpful and purposeful supervision space.
Contracting and Recontracting in Supervision
Supervision should always include agreeing expectations of each other, what we would call contracting in Resilient Families Practice. We would expect workers to be doing this with families, so it is right and ethical that supervisors do it too.
Contracting is not a one-off event; supervisors should be consistently re-contracting with staff and actively seeking feedback about whether the staff member is experiencing supervision as valuable and helpful.
The supervision template above includes a section for two-way feedback at every supervision session.
Here are four other tools you can use to support contracting and re-contracting in supervision:
Supervision Contracting - Colour Circles
Supervision Contracting - User Manuals (individual, pairs, groups)
Supervision Contracting - Trauma Informed Expectations (from Karen Treisman training)
Supervision Contracting - Resilient Families Partnership Review Speech Bubbles
Tools to Support Reflective Supervision
An incredibly helpful resource pack from Research in Practice to help guide and inform our supervision spaces. Lots of tools, materials and activities to try out, for example to support critical thinking and analysis in supervision
Systemic Conversation Cards for Supervision
A thoughtful set of systemic conversation cards from our friends in CSSW to support reflective and relational supervision. We all know how important the parallel process is, and supervisory spaces are a great way to mirror and model. You might use these in contracting for example or to support strengths-based discussions.
Five to choose from (two examples shown), click on the links to open a PDF version of each one:
Appreciation and Strengths Card
Resilient Families Tools and Resources in Supervision
Resilient Families tools can be just as helpful in a supervisory relationship as they are in a worker/family relationship. It also means another opportunity to model and mirror Resilient Families practice.
You can use these tools in lots of way, including to support staff looking to develop their skills or professional development, or to support discussions about casework.
You can find all the Resilient Families tools on these links:
Tool for Reflecting on How Partnership with a Family is Going
Tool for Reflecting on How the Exploration Phase of an assessment is Going
Tool for Identifying Quick Wins
Tool for Identifying Strengths and Needs
Tool for Measuring Progress Towards Goals
Tool for Reflecting on How Goal Setting with a Family is Going
Tool for Turning Goals into a Plan
Tool for Reflecting on How Creating a Plan with a Family is Going
Tool for Reflecting on How Plan Implementation with a Family is Going
Tool for Reflecting on How a Partnership with a Family is Going
Tools for Getting Unstuck - Thinking Together
Tools for Getting Unstuck - Disintegration Grid
Tools for Getting Unstuck - Sculpting
Talking About Similarity and Difference in Supervision
Another opportunity to parallel process, this conversation card on the social graces would be worth using in supervisory spaces to explore similarity and difference, and practice cultural responsiveness (see also our Black Lives Matter Resource Repository for lots of other ideas for supervision)
Trauma Informed Supervision
All line managers are asked to complete Dr Karen Treisman's online training in trauma informed supervision. Here are the resources from that training (but please make sure you do the training first and don't just rely on the slides)
Trauma Informed Supervision - Slide Pack (Karen Treisman training)
Getting Creative in Supervision
One of the ways you might think about making supervision trauma reducing is to introduce creative methods. This is another good way of modelling our practice model, which asks workers to use play and creative methods in their direct work helping families. It can also help when situations feel stuck or when we might want to take a different perspective on a problem
You can find a wide range of ideas on the Direct Work Kit Bag here
and there is a wealth of creative ideas on Karen Treisman's website here
Mediating and Resolving - Restorative Approaches in Supervision
There may be times when relationships within a team rupture and repair. Sometimes the repair happens naturally, sometimes a restorative approach to aid the repair might be needed.
Restorative approaches enable those who feel they have been harmed to convey the impact of the harm to those responsible, and for those responsible to acknowledge this impact and take steps to put it right.
Restorative approaches refer to a range of methods and strategies which can be used both to prevent relationship-damaging incidents from happening and to resolve them if they do happen.
Here is a restorative conversation tool to use to support a restorative discussion either with a staff member or between staff members.
This restorative conversation card might be helpful to structure that conversation between two or more parties (whether within a team, between teams, or between supervisor and team member)
Stay Interviews in Supervision
Stay interviews are all about finding out whats working well for a staff member and what we could do more of to keep them and improve their daily lived experience at work. Its also a great opportunity as part of regular contracting and re-contracting between supervisor and supervisee and getting feedback about what they’re finding helpful and valuable. Finally, it’s a deeply respectful practices that demonstrates care for the worker and a curiosity about what motivates them and sustains them.
You can find some sample stay interview questions here
Exit Interviews in Supervision
Whenever a member of staff leaves a role, they should be offered an exit interview. This applies regardless of circumstances, whether they are leaving the authority, moving to another job in the Council, or ending a secondment.
Exit interviews are an important part of having a positive and validating experience of endings, in exactly the same way that our workers acknowledge and take time and care over endings with families. They offer an opportunity for reflection on a journey taken, and for important learning from the workers experience to be shared. The learning helps us to keep doing the very best for our staff to live well at work.
The staff member should be offered an exit interview with their manager, or with a manager from another team if they prefer.
If the staff member gives their permission, the exit interview notes should be shared with the service manager and their management team, to make sure the learning is reflected on and actioned. The notes might also be shared with the Head of Service and their SMT, if there is learning that would help improve the service as a whole.
Here is a set of exit interview questions that you can use.
Adaptive Leadership - Why it Matters to Supervisors
Adaptive leadership refers to a style of leadership and management that helps leaders to adapt to constantly changing environments and respond effectively to problems.
One of the elements of adaptive leadership was described by Ron Heifetz, author and Professor at Harvard University, as periodically getting off the 'dance floor' and getting up on 'the balcony'. By doing this, Heifetz describes that you can see the big picture, systems, patterns, and the people within them, better than you can when they are right in front of you.
For managers and leaders, this might mean
- regularly taking time to take a step away from the day-to-day operational work in the midst of the action
- going 'up to the balcony' to take a wide lens on how things are and what is happening in your team or service. It might also mean taking team members up to the balcony with you, so they can also see the bigger picture.
The purpose is to make sure leaders and managers can see and solve problems staff and families might be experiencing in their daily practice, particularly in unpredictable environments like the COVID pandemic.
You can watch a short video about 'the balcony and the dancefloor' here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHYiprDK6Wk&feature=youtu.be
and you can read more about adaptive leadership here
https://www.toolshero.com/leadership/adaptive-leadership/
