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Official

Supervision Policy (Reviewed and Revised November 2019)

Wandsworth Borough Council

Children’s Services

Children & Families Division

Quality Assurance Framework Supervision Policy

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Contents

1. Context2. Aims3. Purpose of staff supervision4. Purpose of case supervision5. Supervision agreement6. Frequency7. Record Keeping

-Staff Supervision- Case Supervision- Joint Supervision- informal Supervision- Group Supervision- Reflective Supervision

8. Monitoring

Appendix 1: Childrens Services Supervision Agreement

Appendix 2: Record of Staff Supervision

Appendix 3: Record of Case Supervision

Appendix 5: Preparation for Reflective Supervision Tool

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Effective practitioner supervision can play a critical role in ensuring a clear focus on a child’s welfare. Supervision should support practitioners to reflect critically on the impact of their decisions on the child and their family. The social worker and their manager should review the plan for the child. Together they should ask whether the help given is leading to a significant positive change for the child and whether the pace of that change is appropriate for the child. Practitioners working with vulnerable children should always have access to colleagues to talk through their concerns and judgements affecting the welfare of the child. Assessment should remain an ongoing process, with the impact of services informing future decisions about action.

Working Together 2018

3 |Supervision Policy Reviewed and Revised November 2019

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1. Context

Wandsworth Children’s Services is committed to ensuring that staff are effectively managed, supported and developed to fulfil their responsibilities and achieve the best outcomes for children and their families. Supervision is central to this process. This policy, therefore, defines standards that must be adhered to by managers and staff.

This policy supports the annual corporate Performance Appraisal structure and it forms an essential part of the Departments approach to continuing staff development, retention and progression.

It is issued to ensure that the individual and the organisation are congruent in terms of values, aims, task and function.

This supervision policy was implemented across Children’s Services in May 2015 and reviewed on an annual basis.

2. Aims

The purpose of this document is to

Establish a clear policy on supervision within a line management context, for all levels of Children’s Services staff;

Ensure that the voice of the child and a focus on outcomes for children are at the centre of all of our work;

Ensure appropriate standards of support, personal and professional development needs and performance are consistently managed;

Ensure staff and workers across the department receive regular supervision with appropriate guidance and direction.

3. Purpose of Staff Supervision

Supervision is the process through which managers and staff communicate with each other to ensure that they are properly equipped and supported to discharge their duties and responsibilities to the required standard in Wandsworth. All staff are supervised in their professional development and wellbeing at least every 4 weeks. At managerial and administrative levels this should include:

Supporting staff to perform to their highest standard; Ensuring staff are clear about their role and responsibilities; Ensuring work is planned and purposeful, and that progress is regularly monitored; Ensuring staff are meeting the organisation’s objectives; Assessing experience, competence and development needs to undertake planned or allocated work

within the resources available;


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Ensuring performance issues are identified at an early stage so that clear targets for improvement with timescales can be put in place, in line with Wandsworth’s performance management framework;

Recognising good performance and practise; Reviewing progress, training needs and ensuring annual appraisals are undertaken and reviewed; Managing sickness absence, annual leave and flexible working in line with Wandsworth’s policies;

4. Purpose of case work supervision and management oversight.

Case work supervision and management oversight is an integral part of the supervision process for staff working directly with children, young people and families. This should include:

Reflecting on the practitioner’s impact on the child, young person or family. Making sure that the voice of the child and young person is actively sought and recorded on the

electronic case record and is regularly revisited in supervision; Driving change for the child or young person to improve their lived experience Clarifying tasks, roles and responsibilities, ensuring work is purposeful and that all decisions are

recorded and given the multi-agency nature of our work, particular attention is paid to issues of joint working, investigations and joint decisions;

Reviewing progress against the child’s plan and ensuring actions are being carried out within agreed timescales;

Reviewing electronic case files to maintain quality recording that tells the child’s story. Responding to audit findings and or practice alerts.

5. Supervision Agreements

Supervision agreements are compulsory and should be completed at the first supervision meeting. The agreement should include frequency, duration, location (if appropriate), content and responsibilities including what preparation for supervision are required. A supervision template is given in Appendix 1: Childrens Services Supervision Agreement. It should be kept electronically by both parties and should be filed in the individual’s personal supervision folder.

Supervising managers carry organisational responsibility for ensuring that supervisees are sufficiently experienced and developed to carry out allocated work competently, that standards are met and that plans are implemented effectively.

Every effort should be made to ensure supervision meetings are held as planned. It is recognised that on occasions these meetings may need to be postponed. The reasons for the postponement should be recorded at the subsequent supervision and another meeting re-scheduled by the person who initiated the cancellation although the Manager or supervisor is ultimately responsible for ensuring it takes place.

Supervisees have a professional responsibility in being accountable for their own conduct, development and delivering a high-quality service. This includes being prepared for supervision; bringing evidence of


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progress; identifying personal and professional development needs; seeking assistance and using a range of learning opportunities.

Supervisees have a responsibility to ensure that they receive regular supervision and should discuss with their manager if they are not receiving regular supervision, if this is not quickly resolved the supervisee should escalate the issue to a more senior manager.

6. Frequency of supervision

Newly qualified social workers must be supervised every week during their first 6 weeks and then fortnightly until they have been in post 6 months.

For all other staff Supervision takes place at least every 4 weeks.

For Social Workers this includes discussion and review of the assessment and plan for children subject of:

S17 or S47 assessment; Connected Persons Assessment Child in Need Plan Child Protection Plan Supervision Order Care Plan Special Guardianship Order

For Personal Advisors working with Care Leavers this includes discussion and review of the Pathway Plan for care leavers they are working with at least every 8 weeks.

For Supervising Social Workers working with foster carers this includes discussion and review of the foster carer they are supervising at least every 8 weeks and in line with the requirements of the Fostering Services National Minimum Standards.

7. Record Keeping

Supervision must be recorded and accessible to the practitioner in a timely manner. Case supervision must be recorded in the child or young person’s social care record within 5 working days of supervision taking place.

Staff Supervision

It is the responsibility of the supervising manager to maintain an up to personal supervision file for staff who report directly to them. The content of the personal supervision folder is below. The folder can be stored electronically but must be accessible to the supervisor’s line manager on request.


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Case Supervision and management oversight

It is the responsibility of the supervising manager to record case supervision in the child or young person’s social care record.

Supervisors must use their professional judgement based on risk assessment and the needs of the child to prioritise cases that require a full and detailed record of supervision and


Personal Supervision Folder Content List

Supervision

Supervision Agreement Supervision notes – using Record of Staff Supervision Template including a note of any

children’s cases discussed using the Mosaic ID and initials only – the full record of case discussion is recorded on the child’s Mosaic record.

Sickness

Sickness absence record Sickness self-certification copy Medical certificate copy

Staff Development and Personnel Data

Probationary Reports Personal Targets Appraisals (mid-year and end of year) Formal correspondence (including Codes of Practice)

Training & Professional Development

Training Information (not stored on iTrent or TPD) Practice Observations Learning from Quality Assurance (case audit, practice alert)

Any Other Correspondence

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those where more succinct management oversight will serve to drive the child’s plan forward.

The key is that the supervisory record must be purposeful and moving the plan forward.

Case supervision is recorded as a case note using the following naming convention:

Title: “Name of Supervisor” supervising “Name of Supervisee” e.g. Carol Jones supervising Paul SmithType: Record of Supervision from drop down selectionDate: Date supervision took place

The content of the supervision case note should use the following headings:

Previous supervision date and “Actions/Decisions/Timescales” brought forward for sign off;

Outcome – what has changed for the child as a result of the action being completed Case summary – updated from the previous supervision to reflect what is happening for

the child or young person What is working well? - record indicators of change, even small ones, and impact for

the child/young person/family; record progress towards the goals for the child; What are we worried about? What needs to happen / What still needs to change? What will you do differently if the change you want to see doesn’t happen within the

timescales set in the Child or Family Plan? (Ensure you have access to the current Child’s Plan and directly refer to it);

Direct work with the child since the last supervision meeting including the child’s expressed wishes and feelings?

Supervisor/Supervisee’s reflections; Actions to be taken, by who and by when.

Joint Supervision

The Joint Working Protocol sets out what is expected of practitioners when more than one service is actively working with a child, young person and/or their family. The following is the relevant extract in relation to joint supervision.


Establish strong joint case management oversightHeads of Service, Service Managers and Team Managers need to keep track of any cases in their service or team where other services are actively involved and agree a lead Head of Service or Service Manager responsible for management oversight. If the work is not joined up the lead Head of Service must intervene to review the arrangements.

Heads of Service / Service Managers must make sure joint case management oversight is in place at the beginning and end of a period of joint working. A management oversight case note (copied to all related cases) titled “Joint Case Management” should set out the governance for joint working.

The case note will state which practitioner will take the case work lead; the roles

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When recording Joint Supervision, the supervising manager should use the following naming convention:

Title: “Name of Supervisor” supervising “Name of Supervisee, Service and Name of Supervisee, Service” e.g. Carol Jones supervising Paul Smith, CiN and Lakeisha Willis, Edge of CareType: Record of Supervision from drop down selectionDate: Date supervision took place

Informal Supervision

Informal supervision and management oversight should also be recorded on the child’s electronic record and the supervisor and supervisee should always agree when informal discussions are taking place who will be responsible for recording the discussion and any decisions.

Group Supervision

Group supervision such as case mapping should be captured in a form that demonstrates that the group met, the topic of the discussion, key themes and outcomes. Where group supervision relates to an individual child this should be uploaded to the child’s record. If


Establish strong joint case management oversightHeads of Service, Service Managers and Team Managers need to keep track of any cases in their service or team where other services are actively involved and agree a lead Head of Service or Service Manager responsible for management oversight. If the work is not joined up the lead Head of Service must intervene to review the arrangements.

Heads of Service / Service Managers must make sure joint case management oversight is in place at the beginning and end of a period of joint working. A management oversight case note (copied to all related cases) titled “Joint Case Management” should set out the governance for joint working.

The case note will state which practitioner will take the case work lead; the roles

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group supervision relates to many children a case note should be entered on each individual child’s record summarising the thinking and asking for the individual child using the following convention:

Title: Group SupervisionType: Record of supervision from drop down selectionDate: date group supervision took place

A standard template is not being provided for group supervision to enable teams to be creative in how they record group supervision. For example, a photograph of a child’s case mapping could be uploaded but care must be taken to make sure it is legible.

Reflective Supervision

Encouraging reflective practice is an important aspect of supervision. In providing reflective supervision the supervisor should enable the supervisee to question their practice reflecting on the effectiveness of their interventions and involvement to consider the impact of their intervention and how they might do things differently in the future.

Managers / Supervisors can agree use of the Preparation for Supervision tool (Appendix 5: Preparation for Supervision Tool) with their supervisee to encourage reflective practice. This is not an alternative to the manager / supervisor putting a Record of Casework, Supervision and Agreed Actions on the child’s record.

If reflective discussions relate to a specific child, this should be recorded in the child’s electronic record. However reflective discussions relating to an individual workers performance or development are to be recorded on the Supervision Record template in Appendix 3: Record of Staff Supervision.

8. Monitoring

Heads of Service and Service Managers are required to quality assure staff supervision files on a routing basis. A comprehensive annual audit of Children’s Services supervision will take place annually in line with the Quality Assurance Framework.


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