DEVELOPING PROFESSIONAL SUPERVISION POLICIES, STANDARDS, AND PRACTICES

Social work supervision has evolved over the years, moving from a focus mainly on performance management, which encompasses scrutinizing social workers’ compliance, practice audit, and task completion, to be more reflective in nature. To accommodate this shift, various social work governing bodies globally have developed supervision policies, which may potentially influence supervision practices to good effect. This chapter discusses how some countries developed policies to guide supervision in social work practice, while recognizing that the end policies must acknowledge the diverse cultures, settings, and needs of agencies. The chapter concludes by drawing on best practices to enable agencies to develop context specific policies which are duly informed by the set standards aimed at promoting positive supervision practices.