Supervision as a professional activity has, thanks to its legal anchoring, entered the awareness of the wider professional public. Practice shows that it is a meaningful measure, provided that the organization’s management, which commissions supervision, knows what it can expect from supervision. The question of defining supervision in its practical understanding is an issue of discussion all the time. Supervision is still understood inconsistently not only among social workers, but also among other helping professionals, and even among supervisors themselves. It is a natural cyclical process that reflects the development of supervision from its subjective theoretical grasp to practical application and to the subsequent theoretical redefinition. Definitions in this respect offer attempts at more or less universal delimitation, but its subjective processing in practice leads to various discrepancies. In the present paper, we offer our own understanding of supervision in terms of basic concepts such as internal versus external norms, support versus control, and the kinds and functions of supervision. The presented process model is a dynamic scheme that absorbs the level of development of the supervisee, the level of his or her responsibility in work with the client in relation to the supervisor, and the level of activity and engagement in supervision.

In the 1950s, Austin (1957, in Tsui, 2005) raised three fundamental questions about the functions of supervision that are still relevant today. The first: Can the supervisor continue to combine administrative and educational functions amid ever-deepening specialization? The second: If administrative and educational functions are differentiated and allocated to different groups of supervisees, can an effective division of labor be achieved? We could also ask whether these functions can really be separated. The final, third dilemma is this: Can professional social workers take responsibility for their own work and take the initiative in seeking consultations rather than passively enduring continuous supervision? From these dilemmas, the supportive function of supervision was not excluded, yet professional discussions have focused mainly on the consequences of considering which function in supervision is primary. And in debates, the administrative and educational functions appeared to be the most contradictory. There were groups of experts who argued that these functions are incompatible, others that in balance all functions of supervision are important, and still others who maintained that in social work one should focus on the administrative function of supervision. We do not claim to solve these questions, but to offer for discussion a perspective that is integrative and provides multiple levels of reflection on supervision. Our understanding therefore reflects the views of well-known authors in social work theory, A. Kadushin (1992) and M. Payne (1994).

The process model of supervision, as we named it, is not a derivative of the process model of supervision described by P. Hawkins and R. Shohet (2004). The process model of supervision provides a specific and systemic view of supervision in social work in the context of its functions, goals, components of oversight and supervision, and the norms that define the space of supervision. Historically, since psychotherapeutic schools have the longest tradition of supervision in our context, supervision in social work is still largely influenced by understandings of supervision in therapy. Above all as forms of help toward personal insight or worker insight into one’s own work with the client. On the other hand, the concept of control, or supervision, resonates at times as rejection. Yet we understand supervision in social work precisely in its complex character, with broader scope of action and functions of supervision than in other helping professions.

In the next section, we analyze the systemic integration of educational supervision within a broader spectrum of functions and forms of supervision that reflect the supervisee’s development during supervision (Tomka, 2005). We start from three basic premises integrated within the model itself:

  1. Help and control belong to the essence of social work (Úlehla,1999; Brinkmann, 2001) as its immanent components. Similarly, in social work supervision we also move within the framework of help and control (Hawkins, Shohet, 2004). In the process model, we use the terms help and control, with some degree of terminological simplification, to refer to supervision functions—supervisory oversight.

  2. Kadushin A. (1992) describes three basic supervision functions in helping professions: educational, supportive, and managerial. In social work supervision, therefore, this concerns forms of work spanning the development of skills, understanding, and capabilities of supervisees (education), reflection on emotional experience in work with clients and venting (support), and thirdly management and control of the quality of client work. This type of supervision concept, where the supervisor combines the role of educator with the role of person providing support and managerial oversight of the supervisee’s clients, is defined in the literature as an integrative supervision style (Hawkins, Shohet, 2004).

  3. The scope of any professional action is determined primarily by three areas of human activity. In supervision, this can be said by: - what the supervisee must do (legal norms, binding rules of conduct), - what the supervisee should do (moral norms), and - what the supervisee wants to do (individual norms, that is, ideas about one’s own work, expectations, one’s own working style).

Applying these premises, we understand the concept of supervision in social work as follows:

Scheme No. 1 – The process model of supervision in social work (note 1)

(note 1) For the model, it is true that it is not possible to work simultaneously with all dimensions of the scheme at all levels; it would be a wrong interpretation, for example, to claim that educational supervision concerns only moral norms. A pitfall in trying to model dynamic systems is the attempt to establish firm boundaries, which are often variable and dynamic

By considering the arrangement and relationships of each concept, one can deduce:

  • the more aspects of client work are determined by legal norms, the more oversight is reflected in the supervision process; the supervisor is responsible for the supervisee’s work, since either this person has not completed their education (student) or is subordinate to someone who supervises compliance with norms and standards; on the other hand, the more room a supervisee can use for their own activity (knowing what they want, need, expect—individual norms), the more they can be their own manager of their learning process;
  • educational supervision by its nature lies between managerial supervision and consultative/advisory supervision, that is, it integrates in a balanced way aspects of control and reflection; educational aspects inherently include both a mandatory/universal component (acting in accordance with external norms, acquiring what “I have/must know and how I have/can do”), and an expectation/individual component (what “I want to learn, obtain, understand about myself in work performance, about my own work”); the individual expectation level is conditioned by the specific resources of each supervisee;
  • educational supervision is therefore highly compromisable in what the supervisor “wants” (external norms) and what the student wishes (internal norms);
  • the shift from control components (more directive approach) to reflection components (more facilitating approach) in supervision also mirrors the level of professional growth and independence of the supervisee, that is, the more experienced the supervisee is, the fewer leadership aspects are needed and required in supervision; conversely, this is the case when the supervisee is inexperienced or uncertain;
  • the more the character of supervision approaches fulfilling a managerial function, the more the “substantive” expertise of the supervisor becomes evident, that is, knowledge of the subject matter, and on the other hand, the more supervision becomes supportive, the more the supervisor’s “process” expertise is required and used, that is, greater facilitation and accompaniment.

In the early stages of a supervisee’s professional growth, more guidance is needed. A typical need is for information about the organization itself, procedures, policies, methods of work, and so on. In the case of student supervision, intensive guidance is also required in carrying out assigned tasks. Therefore, the supervisor must also be directive and provide didactic instructions (Kadushin, 1992; Scherpner, Waltraud, Sitzenstuhl, 1999). The degree of necessary or required directivity and the level of student autonomy can be assessed in the context of the development of the supervision relationship as one of the criteria of professional growth of the supervisee. At the same time, it should be noted that not only the supervisee but also the supervisor passes through different developmental stages. A persistent tendency of the supervisor toward directive behavior, even in cases where it is not necessary, can be an indicator of authoritarian behavior, which does not sufficiently initiates growth and autonomy processes in the supervisee. On the contrary, it can keep the supervisee dependent on the supervisor. Therefore, the oversight side must always be connected also with a supportive component and trust in the supervisee’s potential. Despite varying degrees of directive and leadership behavior in supervision, A. Kadushin states that educational supervision is most effective only when linked with reflection on the supervisee’s emotional experience. In this area, ensuring sufficient support is regarded as the main function of supervision (Kadushin, 1992) and as one of the key means to insight into oneself in the context of one’s own work with clients. Returning to the questions posed at the beginning, in continuation of the previous text we will attempt to answer them. First: Can a supervisor continue to combine administrative and educational functions as specialization becomes increasingly deep? Combining different functions of supervision depends on the context of supervision—what the expectation from supervision is and who defines it, what and to what extent responsibility belongs to the supervisor and supervisee, and which function predominates. Combining is a necessity, and if one remains only within one function, supervision can become either management or education. This also supports the next question. If administrative and educational functions are differentiated and designated for different groups of supervisees, can an effective division of labor be achieved? We do not perceive the individual functions as differentiated; rather, as interrelated, changing according to the contract and the immediate needs reflected into supervision by the supervisor or supervisee. The final, third dilemma is this: Can professional social workers take responsibility for their own work and take the initiative in seeking consultations rather than passively endure continuous supervision? Yes, even in the proposed process model, the aim is to provide supervision in this manner. Circumstances and the environment (e.g., internal and external supervision) and the development level of the supervisee do not always allow this. It remains true that the supervisee should have as much freedom in the process as is possible. This corresponds to a degree of responsibility, whose level differs among individual supervisees, whether from objective or subjective causes. Thus, discussion of these questions remains open.

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Authors PhDr. Milan Tomka, PhD. Prof. PaedDr. Milan Schavel, PhD.

The paper was presented at the International Conference on “Social Counseling and Supervision as a Means of Increasing the Professional Competence of Social Workers,” which took place on 7–8 April 2010. The conference organizer was Vysoká škola zdravotníctva a sociálnej práce sv. Alžbety n.o