Recruiting and retaining children and families' social workers. The potential of work discussion groups

Current difficulties with the recruitment and retention of children and families' social workers have been formally acknowledged. However, although initiatives which focus on remuneration and career progression are clearly welcome, research and evidence from practice highlights how social workers themselves place high value on the availability of good quality supervision. Yet, questions remain about whether first-line managers have the time or are even in the best position to offer this support. This article draws on the experience and evaluation of one particular model of supervision — 'work discussion groups' —and explores its impact with residential social work staff and teachers as well as the potential for further developments of this kind

Supervisors’ Experiences of Providing Difficult Feedback in Cross-Ethnic/Racial Supervision

Seventeen clinical supervisors were interviewed regarding their experience of providing difficult feedback in cross-ethnic/racial supervision, and their responses were analyzed using consensual qualitative research (CQR). European American supervisors described supervisees of color who had difficulty in their clinical work with culturally different clients. These supervisors then shared with supervisees their concern that supervisees’ interpersonal skills may negatively affect their clinical and/or supervision work. Supervisors of color described European American supervisees who exhibited insensitivity toward clients of color in session or during supervision. These supervisors shared their concern that supervisees’ lack of cultural sensitivity may negatively affect their clinical work. These contrasting feedback experiences had a profound effect on supervisory relationships and the processes within supervision

What does supervision help with? a survey of 315 social workers in the UK

What does social work supervision help with? There are many different models of supervision and an increasing amount of research. Much of this is concerned with the content of supervision and how supervisors (and supervisees) should behave — and these are important concerns. But even more important is the question of who or what supervision helps with. Supervision is widely considered to have many different functions but in the context of UK local authority social work, must ultimately prove itself as a method for helping people who use services. This article reports on a survey of 315 social workers from UK local authorities. Most reported that supervision helps primarily with management oversight and accountability. However, the small number of practitioners who received regular group supervision and those who received supervision more frequently said it helped with a much broader range of things

Employment and earning differences in the early career of ethnic minority British graduates: the importance of university career, parental background and area characteristics

Ethnic minorities in the U.K. are more likely than the white majority to gain university qualifications, but experience worse labour market outcomes on average. This paper compares employment and earnings of British graduates from ethnic minorities to those of white British graduates to analyse whether ethnic labour market differences exist among the highly qualified, and whether they can be explained by differences in parental background, local area characteristics or differences in university careers. These factors account for a substantial part of persistent ethnic differences in earnings, but explain very little of the differences in employment. Compared to the literature estimating ethnic labour market inequalities on people with any level of qualification, we find smaller ethnic differences in employment and almost no differences in earnings among graduates entering the labour market. The results are robust to various changes in model specification

Self awareness of the supervisor in supervision

Teaching self awareness is an important and sensitive task in the supervision of the clinical casework student. However, lack of self awareness on the part of the supervisor may lead to a serious impaction of this learning process, and unfortunately, there is no institutionalized process for reviewing lack of supervisory self awareness as there is for students. Some occasions in which problems in supervisory self awareness are likely to occur are: the supervisor who has difficulty in responding appropriately to the student's dependency demands in supervision, responding either by withdrawing from the student or being overprotective of him; the supervisor who is threatened by students whose character styles are very different from his own; and the supervisor who views client behavior from the perspective of a value system very different from the student's.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44357/1/10615_2004_Article_BF00760155.pd

Consensuality of Peer Nominations Among Scientists

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69069/2/10.1177_107554708200400210.pd

Occupational Communication as Boundary Mechanism

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/69000/2/10.1177_073088847400100404.pd

The management of children and family social workers in England: reflecting upon the meaning and provision of support

Published by Sage in Journal of Social Work, September 2015 - DOI: 10.1177/1468017315607092In England in 2010, the then Children’s Workforce Development Council introduced an initiative which aimed to support front line social work managers in the performance of their role. This article reflects on the way in which support was interpreted and implemented by the Children’s Workforce Development Council and the local authorities that participated in the project, but also the relevance of the project for the social work profession in England at the time

Self-Organizing Networks in Complex Infrastructure Projects

While significant importance is given to establishing formal organizational and contractual hierarchies, existing project management techniques neglect the management of self-organizing networks in large-infrastructure projects. We offer a case-specific illustration of self-organization using network theory as an investigative lens. The findings have shown that these networks exhibit a high degree of sparseness, short path lengths, and clustering in dense “functional” communities around highly connected actors, thus demonstrating the small-world topology observed in diverse real-world self-organized networks. The study underlines the need for these non-contractual functions and roles to be identified and sponsored, allowing the self-organizing network the space and capacity to evolve