Guidance on Group Supervision/Mapping ‘stuck cases’
Purpose
This guidance has been developed to:
 Ensure the principles of partnership are adhered to and a paternalistic approach to
child protection is avoided.
 Ensure the use of Signs of Safety is promoted between colleagues and partner
agencies
 Enhance the skills of practitioners and managers
 Promote a culture of reflective and restorative practice
 Improve the quality of decision making and judgements about risk
Group supervision – case mapping
Group supervision should not replace individual supervision but can be a very helpful
learning process as the whole group benefits from the skills and experience of each
participant.
It can take place within teams, across teams and across services. It can help build a
resilient workforce by sharing anxiety inherent in case work by providing a strategy to
deal with uncertainty and a means of obtaining emotional support.
The group can be exclusively made up of team members or involve other teams and
partners to provide more substantial learning opportunities. Group supervision will
generally be led by the Signs of Safety Practice Leads although other practitioners may
also facilitate sessions.
Group Supervision/ case mapping as a group may be particularly helpful for:
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Cases that are ‘stuck’
Cases that are very complex
Cases where there is a lot of uncertainty about the risk
Cases where there is disagreement about risk
Recording and Confidentiality
Where group supervision has taken place, a brief summary should be recorded on the
child’s file. No ‘next steps’ decisions should be agreed without the accountable team
manager present although ideas can be put forward for the worker to consider with their
team manager.
Confidentiality agreements should be made prior to discussions where necessary. In most
situations participants should not need to be advised of full names and addresses of service
users.
Case mapping discussions with co-working professionals
Cases that are being co-worked between professionals/agencies should not be discussed in
group supervision by those involved. Where discussions about risk need to take place without
family member’s knowledge or presence, this should take the form of a Strategy Meeting
(within which Signs of Safety mapping can be used as a tool).
It is contradictory to the principles of working in partnership with parents to have professional’s
meetings about individual cases without the families knowledge, this includes case mapping. It
also goes against the principles and ethos of Signs of Safety. The only exceptions to this are:
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Getting together with other practitioners involved in order to resolve professional
disagreements. This type of meeting would focus on professional relationships i.e. when
have we worked well together? When do problems arise? What should happen next? The
case itself should not be discussed.
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Getting together to map a case with the families explicit permission, i.e. as agreed by them
as part of a child’s plan. This can be useful in complex situations where there are
professional disagreements about danger statements and/or safety goals and the family
agree for professionals to get together without them in order to resolve the situation.
Notes from this type of meeting should be recorded on the child’s file and shared with the
family.
September 2015