Suchergebnisse

Increasing emphasis on the role of the middle-management supervisor led to the development of a peer group supervisory model that enhances professional development without stifling autonomy, responsibility, and creativity. Examples of the model's objectives, learning phases, and benefits and limitations are presented.

Peer group supervision implemented in a public child welfare agency enhanced the training of staff in the management and treatment of protective services cases in a cost-effective, growth-producing way. The agency wanted a training method that would upgrade the overall quality of service.

Partnership Care West is a voluntary organisation that contracts with the Northern Ireland Social Care Council (NISCC) to provide ten placements for social work students. NISCC is a statutory organisation, with responsibility for registering and regulating social care/work, improving standards in education and training and standardising practice in Northern Ireland NISCC (2003).The students attend the practice learning centre and are then given placements in voluntary sector sites established by the centre. Traditionally, the students were supervised on a one to one basis using the long arm approach. In recent years however, the centre has developed a model for supervising these students in groups.Building on my positive experience of conducting group supervision and to further my knowledge, skills and values in this area, I recently undertook an international comparison with the School of Social Work in Haifa Israel. This School has an already well established model for supervising students in groups and I hoped that I could learn something to help me develop my model further. I would like to thank Nava Arkin at the University of Haifa for her willingness to take part in this comparison and for her encouragement throughout. This article aims to outline my findings of the comparison and outline the theoretical constructs that make international comparisons in social work possible.

This study monitors group supervision for students' field training in a Bachelor's Degree in Social Work (BSW) program and compares it with the experience of the students receiving the traditional individual supervision. The experimental group supervision model is implemented in two consecutive years. Students' experiences are compared at three points in time: before pilot study began; at the end of the 1st year of the pilot study; and at the end of the 2nd year. Findings indicate that in most areas, and at all points in time, students receiving group supervision do not differ from their colleagues in the traditional individual supervision group. However, students receiving group supervision are less satisfied at all points in time with various aspects of the supervision they receive. These findings generally broaden our understanding of group supervision in social work field training and provide evidence to support future decisions on the nature of supervision in fieldwork training in BSW programs.