Books on attachment and neuroscience:
The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog
Ghosts From the Nursery
Books on working with children in schools:
Attachment in the Classroom
Inside I’m Hurting
School-Based Play Therapy
Books on working with families using play:
Family Play Therapy
Strategic Family Play Therapy
The Therapist’s Notebook for Families
Engaging Children In Family Therapy
The Therapist’s Notebook for Children and Adolescents
Workplace supervision for those involved in the helping professions gives: “a chance to stand back and reflect; a chance to avoid the easy way out of blaming others - clients, peers, the organisation, society or even oneself; and it can give us a chance to engage in the search for new options, to discover the learning that often emerges from the most difficult situations, and to get support.” (Hawkins and Shohet, 2000)
Supervision is an unconditional space to share your thoughts, feelings and experiences, without fear of criticism or judgement. It is a time where the supervisee is enabled to re-evaluate the emotional impact of their work and gain insight, explore possibilities and find new resolutions.
Kadushin’s model of supervision (infed.org-supervision)
The functions of supervision are:
[This is Kadushin’s (1992) rendering of Dawson 1926: 293].
Supervision can have a dual role
‘both to ensure that agency policy is implemented - which implies a controlling function - and a parallel responsibility to enable supervisees to work to the best of their ability.’ (Brown and Bourne 1995: 10)
In educational supervision supervisees may be helped to:
In supportive supervision the primary goal is to improve morale and job satisfaction (Kadushin 1992: 20).
Supervision can be seen as having three aspects:
References
Interesting sources of further information:
Two American Educational Texts:
‘Techniques in the Clinical Supervision of Teachers: Preservice and Inservice Applications’ Acheson, Keith A., Gall, Meredith Damien
‘Supervision in Education: Problems and Practices’. - Tanner, Daniel; Tanner, Laurel;
More technical sources
Education appears out of step with other professions working with children, in that we do not have a history of providing clinical supervision for our work force. Now that Education is coming under the banner of Children’s Services it is a chance for this anomaly to end. Social workers and Health Professionals working within the new service, for the same Director of services and with the same client population will receive supervision for their work with children, who they may see for a short time, either regularly or occasionally. School staff working with these same children, and spending the majority of their work time with them, are unlikely to receive any such support.
Workplace supervision for those involved in the helping professions gives: “a chance to stand back and reflect; a chance to avoid the easy way out of blaming others - clients, peers, the organisation, society or even oneself; and it can give us a chance to engage in the search for new options, to discover the learning that often emerges from the most difficult situations, and to get support.” (Hawkins and Shohet, 2000)
Supervision is primarily a containing and enabling process. Members of staff working in Special Education, in Nurture Groups or Inclusion Units may be working with children whose behaviour and/or circumstances arouse difficult feelings in those who share in their education and care. Supervision can empower supervisees by helping to unlock their own awareness and understanding and by enabling them to use themselves more fully and effectively.
Putting Children First?
The children in our care may be particularly vulnerable. It is our duty to care for them and to ensure our interactions with them are as uncontaminated by our own issues as possible. Only by taking our emotional health seriously and acknowledging the dependency of our children on our ability to respond appropriately to their needs, their actions and their issues can we truly be there for them. If we feel stressed, worried, unhappy, disappointed, overwhelmed, undervalued, misunderstood or not listened to, our reactions to the child are coloured by our own state of mind. Children sense tension, dislike, impatience and distrust, some may experience this atmosphere at home and deserve to be schooled in an atmosphere of acceptance, respect, optimism, tolerance and positive regard. Any inconsistency and incongruence between our words and our actions, our expectations of them and our expectations of ourselves, will confirm their distrust in those caring for them.
Equal Opportunities: Providing Equality of Care.
Recent articles, both in TES and NASEN (Give details) have encouraged educators to look at the needs of staff and of caring for staff as a way of providing the best in care for pupils. Clinical Supervision takes this argument forwards, by not only providing a function of caring for staff, it also provides a forum for personal development through a supportive arena for challenge and growth.
We cannot ask the children to do what we are not prepared to do ourselves.
* Do we want them to talk about their problems and feelings? We need to be able to express our feelings and to be able to ask for things that we need.
* Do we want them to deal with stress in an appropriate way? We need to have developed strategies for dealing with stress and for recognising the danger signs that stress is affecting us.
*Do we want them to trust us? We need to have trust in others.
* Do we want children to develop self-awareness and have positive self-esteem? We need to acknowledge our own limitations and weaknesses and recognise and value our strengths and our abilities.
* Do we recognise the need to nurture and to care for the children who we are charged with enriching and enlightening? We must learn to care for ourselves and to nurture the child within each of us
* Do we want to create the safety for children to dare to take risks and to accept the possibility of failure? We must have realistic and tolerant expectations of ourselves.
Promoting Life Long Learning
Clinical Supervision, as part of educators Continuing Professional Development, fosters creativity, encourages diversity, and develops skills, knowledge and understanding. Learning about ourselves and our relationships with others develops not only workplace practices but impacts on all areas of our lives and our wellbeing. While students, NQTs and staff new to posts or the profession may receive support and opportunities of exploring practice with more experienced colleagues, members of Senior Management Teams, Heads of Units and Headteachers may find dwindling opportunities for support and contact with more experienced peers. Just as staff responsibility increases, support and mentoring often decreases. Appropriate supervision at every stage of a career provides appropriate support, challenge and opportunity for growth.
Hawkins and Shohet (1989: 42) explain that supervision may enable supervisees to
“Understand the client better
Become more aware of their own reactions and responses to the client
Understand the dynamics of how they and their client are interacting
Look at how they intervened and the consequences of their interventions
Explore other ways of working with this and other similar client situations.”
Proctor (1987) describes one of the functions of supervision as ‘restorative’. Surely any service would wish to provide their workers with such a ‘restorative’ experience. A replenished workforce is enabled to best nurture the health and wellbeing of those in it’s care.