Innovations in Social Work Practice Education:
Utilising Relationship Based Social Work
The potential significance of the
supervisory relationship in
practice education
Dr Michelle Lefevre
University of Sussex
5.6.14
The focus of this presentation
• What the supervisory relationship is nested within
• Why the relationship might matter
• What can go well/go wrong
• What Practice Educators need to be attuned to
• How PEs might support themselves/be better supported by their
agencies
2
Complex networks of supervisory
relationships (1)
PE/WBS
Student
Tutor/University
3
• Potential for
splitting/
projection
• Fantasies/
prejudices
• Phantasies
• Transference,
countertransference
Complex networks of supervisory
relationships (2)
• Power, status
and influence
• Whose voice
counts?
• Valuing and
respect
• Fears or trust
• Alignments
• Cracks
4
Tutor
PE
WBS
Student
Complex networks of supervisory
relationships (3)
What is enacted
between the
supervisor/student is
influenced/reflected by
others around them
Peers
(Mattinson, 1975).
Where are the
family/individuals
positioned and how are
they understood/helped
within the supervisory
relationship? (systemic)
5
Team
Uni
Supervisor
Student
Nests: containment or impingement?
National policy &
practice context
University
Agency
PE/WBS
Student
Service
user
6
So, what is the importance of the
supervisory relationship in these
networks?
• Technical considerations are important
• But good PE also associated with emotional and processoriented factors (Doel et al, 2004)
• PE can be the reflective container for students’ responses to:
- complex, challenging, distressing client situations (Ferguson,
2011; Munro, 2011)
- anxiety and drop in confidence from being a learner and being
assessed (Salzberger-Wittenberg et al., 1983)
7
Earlier models of supervision in PE
• Early quasi-therapeutic models focused on internal world (e.g.
Taft, 1950; Hamilton, 1954).
• Students concerned about boundaries and intrusion (Kadushin,
1974)
• Role systems (Wijnberg & Schwarz,1977) more egalitarian and
collaborative; Growth in understandings of power and antioppressive practice
• Downside: PEs wary of considering the more affective, processoriented and interpersonal components of their interaction with
students and of students with service users (Bogo, 1993)
8
What have students said about the
importance of the relationship?
(Lefevre, 2004)
• 2004 written survey, qualitative & quantitative data
• Sample: 72 students who were undertaking a qualification
programme in social work, either MSW or DipSW level, England.
• Undertaken 2 weeks after they had received their final report
from the practice teacher
• 44 completed the survey (61% of sample frame)
• 17 were in first placement, 27 final placement (reviewed both
placement experiences)
• No demographic data
• Limitations: influence of feelings about recent PE assessment
9
Positive words and phrases used by
students to describe rel with PE (1)
• 78 words reflected positive aspects of the relationship.
- ‘supportive’ appeared 34 times, used by 48%
- ‘friendly’ (13 times); ‘helpful’ and ‘good’ (11); ‘positive’ (7); encouraging’,
‘relaxed’ and ‘understanding’ (6); ‘informative’, ‘respect(ful)’, ‘warm’ and ‘open’
(5).
• 26 of these denoted a supportive relationship:
- ‘kind’, ‘nurturing’, ‘caring’, ‘warm’, ‘rewarding’, ‘friendly’, ‘considerate’, ‘fun’,
‘sensitive’, ‘encouraging’, ‘approachable’, ‘understanding’, ‘accommodating’,
‘trusting’, ‘confidence-giving’.
• Some reflected a person-centred approach by PE:
- ‘empathic’, ‘congruent’, ‘valued’.
10
Positive words and phrases used by
students to describe rel with PE (2)
• 16 suggested a relaxed learning environment:
- ‘comfortable’, ‘informal’, ‘flexible’, ‘easy-going’ or ‘laid-back’
• 28 indicated a relationship with an anti-oppressive and
collaborative approach with dynamics of empowerment, respect,
mutuality, fairness and transparency:
- ‘good communication’, ‘a sharing of ideas’, ‘an equal relationship where
anything could be discussed’ and a sense that they were ‘learning together’.
- This resulted in students feeling ‘listened-to’ and ‘included’ and that they
were part of a team.
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More negative words and phrases (1)
• 47 words indicated negative dynamics in the relationship:
- ‘strained’ (3); ‘demanding’, ‘distant’, ‘stressful’, ‘unhelpful’ (2).
• 16 signified a lack of support, warmth and friendliness:
- ‘unapproachable’,‘unvalued’, ‘uncomfortable’, ‘distant’ ‘impersonal’.
• 2 students felt negative because the practice teacher was overfriendly and supportive
• Some indicated tension in the relationship:
- ‘strained’,‘inflexible’, ‘wary’, ‘prickly’, ‘awkward’, ‘stressful’, ‘unpredictable’,
‘tempestuous’; ‘worrying’ about the practice teacher’s mood; ‘on a rollercoaster
ride’.
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More negative words and phrases (2)
• 12 related to the practice teacher’s availability, such as
• ‘always busy’, ‘rushed’, ‘stretched’, ‘basic’, ‘bare minimum’; low priority, a
burden or nuisance.
• For 13 the relationship was oppressive
- an ‘unconstructive’, ‘confrontational’ even ‘degrading’ relationship in which
they felt ‘domineered’, ‘bullied’ and ‘controlled’.
- their ‘self-confidence and self-esteem plummeted’; they ‘never knew whether
[they were] right or wrong’; ‘not listened to’; left to ‘get on with it’.
- Stereotyping: ‘Presumptions were made but questions never asked’.
- One described the practice teacher as ‘Very racist’.
• 1/3 indicated transference and counter-transference
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- ‘Mother and son (I was the son)’.
Students’ perceptions of whether and
how the relationship had an impact on
their learning and development
• 90% believed that the relationship with their practice teacher had
had either ‘a lot’ or ‘a bit’ of an impact on their learning and
development
• When asked ‘how’, the theme of supportiveness dominated (31
statements)
• A lack of support experienced in the relationship negatively affected
respondents’ development
• Worries that over-supportiveness was also unhelpful
• Where PEs lacked competence, this caused the student to feel
negatively about the relationship
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Whether and how the relationship
affected the effectiveness and accuracy
of the assessment (1)
• 77.5% rated the relationship as having impacted the effectiveness
and accuracy of the assessment
• A collaborative and trusting relationship enabled a fuller picture of
their competence to emerge, resulting in a fairer, more accurate
and more transparent assessment process.
• 4 believed that the way power had been mishandled in the
relationship had adversely affected their assessment
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Whether and how the relationship
affected the effectiveness and accuracy
of the assessment (2)
• 4/5 suggested correspondence between feeling positive
about the relationship and believing the assessment to be
effective and accurate
• 6 questioned whether their positive relationship with PE
made it less fair because of bias or reluctance to challenge
• Half of the 9 who had a negative relationship felt it had an
impact on the effectiveness and accuracy of the PE
assessment
• But 3 others still felt they received a fair assessment
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What influenced the development of the
student’s relationship with their PE
17
• How much student felt listened to/heard by the practice teacher 83.1%
• How much student felt respected and valued by the practice teacher
80.3%
• Trust/safety (or lack of) 74.6%
• The way in which critical feedback was given 66.2%
• The practice teacher’s capacity to provide emotional support 66.2%
• How much student felt the practice teacher showed them warmth 63.4%
• Issues in the power relationship 50.7%
• The practice teacher’s availability due to agency pressures 43.7%
• Personal stress on the part of the practice teacher 38%
• Personal stress on the part of the student 36.6%
• Transference/counter-transference 31%
• Issues of race/gender/age/class/disability/sexuality 23.9%
So what can we take from this?
• Powerful feelings are generated in practice learning, e.g. anxiety,
vulnerability, under-confidence, powerlessness, hope,
dependence
• These have a foundation in the relationship between the student
and the practice teacher.
- Relating to the roles they inhabit
- Each others’ expectations of these roles
- And how they each embody these roles
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Unhelpful if processes go all one way
STUDENT
PRACTICE EDUCATOR
• Learner
• Teacher
• Recipient of
• Cared for
• Child
19
One
way
assessment
• Assessor
• Carer
• Parent
This model implies a striving for
reciprocity
STUDENT
Learner
Assessee
Cared for
Child
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MUTUAL
PRACTICE
EDUCATOR
Both learning
Self & other evaluation
Mutual caring &
recognition of other
Adult
Teacher
Assessor
Carer
Parent
This improves both learning and
assessment
• Supportive experiences are also significant to perceptions of the
accuracy and fairness of the PE assessment
• More trust meant they were more willing to expose fallibility and
be open to critical feedback
• So assessment based on the fullest of information
• An ongoing constructive looping process between formative and
summative assessment, maximizing learning opportunities.
• The reverse was caused by ‘expectations clash’, uncollaborative,
non-transparent approach to assessment
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Crucial to consider developmental
stages and needs of each
Student
• Some vulnerable/anxious and
more dependent at the beginning
• Psychodynamic model allows for
stage of nurturing (horticultural)
• So student has time to ‘grow up’
• But not to ‘full independence’ but
aiming for Fairbairn’s ‘mutual
dependence’ & resilience (ongoing
needs for learning & support)
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Practice educator
• What stage is PE at in
supervisory career?
• What might stop them
supporting?
• What is the nature of their
own practice context?
• How much learning/ nurturing
are they receiving?
• How resilient?
So what are the implications for
Practice Educators?
Agency
PE/WBS
• The need for the
agency to contain the
PE, who contains the
student, who contains
the service user
Student
Service
user
• The student learns how
to do this experientially
for their own practice
But PEs need workplace
environment that supports them
• PE can’t be supportive in an unsupportive environment
- ‘Emotional responsiveness and capacity are not
merely a product of individuals, but are powerfully
influenced by collective and contextual processes,
including workplace, professional and socio-cultural
factors’ (Morrison, 2007, p. 253).
• Enhanced self-awareness, rigorous self-reflection and a
context for practice which facilitates this are required:
- To be able to practise well, social workers have to be
employed in an organisation that supports them and
their professional development (Munro, 2011, p. 105)
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The role of the organisation and
PE
• If workers don’t feel safe, they won’t separate from
the office or car (Ferguson, 2011)
• Workers need a ‘container’ (the organisation) to
hold/make bearable these overwhelming feelings
and create a safe reflective space – PE does for
student (Bion, 1962)
• Supervisor aims to understand and name students’
feelings and needs by receiving them herself –
counter-transference?
What the student can then experience
• Repeated experience of an attuned response in supervision leads
students to feel what is happening to them is understandable
• It makes their experience bearable and nameable
• So uncertainty and anxiety become more manageable
• This generates higher level emotional and cognitive development in the
student and an ability to ‘hold’ the client
• Although containment originally comes through the relationship, this
process is internalised and the student learns to do it for him/herself:
→ reflective practice
Practitioners who were more able to
reflect are more:
• Committed to conceptualising and developing their practice
• Able to explore alternative perspectives
• Able to embrace and engage with uncertainty, complexity and risk
• ‘Mindful’ and ‘whole-hearted’ when engaging with practice
• Responsive, responsible, relational and empowering regarding
partnership with service users
• Able to critically scrutinise their affective responses to encounters
so that they become another source of knowledge (Ruch, 2011)
What happens when the supervisor
does not act as a container
• The emotions don’t go away; instead:
- This developmental construction process is impaired
- Thoughts and feelings remain unprocessed and fragmented
• Not only is the student left with unbearable anxiety in the moment but she
does not learn how to reflect effectively on or in action (Schon, 1983).
• Supervision in PE does not become either a support or a transformatory
experience
• Unhelpful defence mechanisms develop,
- e.g. Menzies-Lyth (1998): ‘the liver in bed nine’ - detachment
- Engaging more in routine and procedural tasks
- Burn-out, illness
Process reflection (1)
• Psychodynamic theories
- Defences against unbearable anxiety
- Splitting/ project
- Transference/counter-transference
- What is happening between us in the here and now?
- How might this reflect what is happening with the service
user?
- How might it relate to students/PEs’ usual patterns?
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Process reflection (2)
Transactional analysis
Games People Play (Berne, 1964) - ego states
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- Parent critical/nurturing
- Parent critical/nurturing
- Adult
- Adult
- Child free/rebellious/
adaptive
- Child free/rebellious/
adaptive
Process reflection (3)
Drama Triangle (Karpman):
Victim
Rescuer
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Persecutor
Self-awareness
• Professionals are every bit as capable of repression,
splitting, projection and transference as service users.
• PEs are every bit as capable of repression, splitting,
projection and transference as students…..
• What patterns have you noticed?
• What feeling states/processes are you most likely to
accuse others of? They may be yours…..
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Developing resilience in SW students
(drawing on Beddoe et al, 2011; Grant & Kinman, 2011)
• Decline in well-being in NQSWs; retention is decreasing
• Students will need skills to enable them to ‘thrive and survive’ in
practice careers - both personal qualities and readiness to
manage self and emotions in the turbulent workplace
• How may PE support students’ personal dispositions so that
hopefulness, altruism, empathy, optimism, coping and personal
robustness may be nurtured?
• It is a multi-systemic process. Students have a personal
responsibility for their own self-development but the
organisation/PE has to be safe and containing to promote this
How the organisation and
supervision may help (2)
• Promote development of students’ clear professional identity with
an understanding of what this role realistically will involve
• ‘Identity building’ work, to explore and articulate :
- Who am I with this new professional identity?
- What do I believe in?
- What are my aspirations?
- What will I stand up for?’
• Demonstrate professional ethics and qualities
- You demonstrating nurturing, compassion, authority, respect,
self-awareness and strong boundaries
How the organisation and
supervision may help (3)
• Supporting students developing coping strategies and maintaining
appropriate work–life balance
• Recognising personal journeys and motivations and the need to
process these (e.g. ‘rescuer’, need to be liked).
• The importance of clear personal and professional boundaries
• Mindfulness and other awareness enhancing techniques (e.g. yoga):
- Can help students manage stress & cope more effectively with their own
emotional states and highly charged emotional states of others
- Can help facilitate students’ active listening, promote self-awareness and
enhance critical reflection
- Can support students to develop their capacity for deep reflection and
enhance their emotional intelligence
How the organisation and supervision
may help (4)
• Using CBT techniques to help students manage guilt, worry, blame
(Grant & Kinman, 2011)
- Identify how thinking errors and negative automatic thoughts may
prevent students from thinking constructively and non-blamingly about
work situations
• Action planning
• Primary appraisal: the student makes a conscious evaluation of an event
such as a harm or a loss, a threat, or a challenge.
• Secondary appraisal takes place when the student asks himself or herself,
‘What can I do about it?’ - evaluating the internal and external resources
available to them that have the potential to buffer stress reactions (Bakker et
al., 2004).
• Develop realistic goals that are not too easy or too difficult to achieve.
Peer Coaching among PEs to develop
their own reflective practice
• Peer coaching draws on Grant & Kinman’s (2011) work on resilience
• A collaborative relationship to facilitate development of skills through feedback,
reflection and self-directed learning in a safe dyadic space
• Helps PEs identify personal strengths as well as perceived weaknesses, so
promotes self-awareness and facilitates reflection on their practice of PE
• Benefits social-emotional development and improved interpersonal skills such as
active listening, questioning and probing, for each PE.
• Exercise A: Coach helps coachee to adopt a solution-focused, rather than
problem-focused, approach to difficulties they may encounter in PE
• Exercise B: Coach asks coachee to identify ‘Sparkling Moments’ - times in their
work when they felt particularly successful and satisfied. Explore what made this
situation satisfying, and consider how to maximise such opportunities in future.
Some questions to ponder
• How well do you feel you are able to offer this kind of
containment and promotion of reflective, resilient practice
through your supervisory style? (appraise current capabilities)
• What might get in the way of you doing this better? (looking for
blocks or skill gaps)
• What strategies could you develop to improve your own practice
(and that of your organisation, too, if possible)?
References
• Beddoe, L., Davys, A. & Adamson, C. (2011): Educating Resilient
Practitioners, Social Work Education: The International Journal, Advance
Access DOI:10.1080/02615479.2011.644532
• Bion, W. (1962) Learning from Experience. London: Heinemann.
• Bogo, M. (1993) ‘The student/field instructor relationship: the critical
factor in field education’, The Clinical Supervisor, vol. 11, no. 2, pp. 23–
36.
• Doel, M., Deacon, L. & Sawdon, C. (2004) An Audit of Models of Practice
Learning in the New Social Work Award,
http://www.practicelearning.org.uk/
• Ferguson, H. (2011) Child Protection Practice. Palgrave Macmillan
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References
• Grant, L. & Kinman, G. (2011): Enhancing Wellbeing in Social Work
Students: Building Resilience in the Next Generation, Social Work
Education: The International Journal, Advance Access:
DOI:10.1080/02615479.2011.590931
• Hamilton, G. (1954) ‘Self-awareness in professional education’, Social
Casework, vol. 35,pp. 374–377.
• Lefevre, M. (2005) 'Facilitating Practice Learning and Assessment: The
Influence of Relationship', Social Work Education, 24:5,565 — 583
• Mattinson, J. (1975) The Reflection Process in Casework Supervision.
London: Tavistock Institute.
• Menzies-Lyth, I. (1988) Containing Anxiety in Institutions: Selected
Essays, Volume 1. London: Free Association Books.
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• Morrison, T. (2007) Emotional Intelligence, Emotion and Social Work:
Context, Characteristics, Complications and Contribution, British
Journal of Social Work ,37, 245–263
• Munro, E. (2011) The Munro Review of Child Protection:Final Report.
http://www.education.gov.uk/childrenandyoungpeople/safeguardingchild
ren/protection/b00219296/munro
• Ruch, G. (2007) Reflective Practice in Contemporary Child-care Social
Work: The Role of Containment, British Journal of Social Work (2007)
37, 659–680
• Ruch, G.(2011) Where have all the feelings gone? developing reflective
and relationship-based management in child-care social work, British
Journal of Social Work,Advance Access doi:10.1093/bjsw/bcr134.
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• Salzberger-Wittenberg, I., Henry, G. & Osborne, E. (1983) The
Emotional Experience of Learning and Teaching, Routledge and Kegan
Paul, London.
• Taft, J. (1950) ‘A conception of the growth process underlying social
casework practice’, Social Casework, vol. 31, pp. 311–318.
• Wijnberg, M. H. & Schwartz, M. C. (1977) ‘Models of student
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