How can you set the agenda for supervision?
There are 4 main functions of Supervision
1. Educational - e.g going through organisational policies and processes, teaching specific intervention skills, helping workers identify resources to assist their clients
2. Administrative - e.g checking if records are up-to-date, documents properly filed, casework activities are properly tracked.
3. Consultation - e.g offering practice wisdom on working with other organisations to broker resources, providing an alternative perspective of how a case intervention can be carried out.
4. Support - e.g helping workers deal with the emotions when facing a client's trauma, dealing with frustrations of challenging cases; ensuring self-care.
Ideally, supervision should cover all four areas. However, in reality, I have found this to be challenging to do especially within a limited individual supervision hour. For holistic professional growth, social workers can set the agenda according to what is critical BUT ensuring these four functions are discussed within the month. Supervisors too can be purposeful in planning the supervision sessions to cover these four areas.
P.S:
I found the following article about the functions of supervision an interesting read: http://infed.org/mobi/the-functions-of-supervision/
Do you have a question about social work, programme planning or community development? I'll be glad to assist.