Peer Professional Support & Mentoring Award
In 2013, ARC began a project funded by Skills for Care to prepare eight Registered
Managers (or similar) to become professional supervisors/peer mentors.
Why Peer Professional Supervision?
Our project set out to address some actions for social care providers, specified in
The Model of Care set out in the DH Review, "Transforming care: A national
response to Winterbourne View Hospital", which states "It is not sufficient to have
a well trained workforce. There also needs to be good clinical and managerial
leadership" and providers should "provide effective and appropriate
leadership, management, mentoring and supervision."
Social care delivery is ever changing and managers are continually expected
to meet the challenges presented, whilst often working in isolation. They need
to constantly learn and apply new skills, often with little support and formal
learning or development, and little time to reflect on their own practice.
SCIE (briefing 43) highlighted that “The emotionally charged nature of the work can
place particular demands on people in the field. It is important to provide
opportunities for reflective supervision”. CQC also recognised this in their
consultation on requirements for registered managers, in the wake of Winterbourne
View, “This is particularly important for staff that are working with people who use
services with complex and challenging needs – supervision provides an environment
in which they can explore their own personal and emotional reactions to their work”.
Our framework for reflective practice set out to address this need by enabling
managers to receive professional mentorship by a skilled mentor.
How did we approach the task?
The project was based around the delivery of peer professional supervision for
managers, based on the model of clinical supervision undertaken by health
professionals. The focus was to prepare managers to become professional
supervisors, thus, all options considered were based around this outcome and
included:
We decided that, as we were targeting managers who don’t receive this type of
support because they work in isolation, or are ‘peerless’ within their service, we
should offer the course in one locality across a variety of providers. By doing
this, we hoped to create a network of supervisors who would continue to
support each other following the lifetime of the project.
As this was one of the priority outcomes identified by Skills for Care and ARC
promotes qualifications as an important aspect of continuing professional
development, we decided that this would indicate a quality outcome, motivate
participants and give them the confidence and skills to disseminate the training to
prepare others for the role of supervisor.
What were we trying to achieve?
Our aim was to support a group of managers, employed by different
organisations, often isolated, to engage in Peer Professional Supervision (PPS).
PPS sessions would enable the managers to:
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Reflect on and develop their practice.
Discuss individual cases in depth, in a safe and confidential environment.
Support each other in changing their practice and in identifying
developmental needs.
Review professional standards.
Keep updated on developments in their profession.
Identify professional development needs.
By providing:
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Continuing professional development (CPD) for Managers & QCF award in
mentoring
Blended approach to learning and development
The intended outcomes of this project were:
• A better quality, person-centred service for individuals, from staff who are better
able to manage the personal and emotional impact of their practice.
• Achievement of QCF mentoring unit by Registered Managers, through a PPS
process.
What was done?
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Training materials and associated document designed to run the course and
equip participants with supervision records.
Appropriate qualification sourced.
The programme was advertised.
Participants were selected on a ‘first come first served’ basis, but there was a
healthy demand for places on the course, so we decided to limit places to one
per organisation for fairness. Even with short notice, we could have filled at
least eighteen places locally.
All participants were registered for the Peer Mentoring Award.
A suitable venue was booked.
Two days of training were delivered, followed by practical and
assessment days that ran from the 1st October 2013 to the 28th January
2014.
Service level agreements were signed by all the stakeholder organisations.
The assessment and observations of practice took placed as planned and we
regularly fitted in portfolio building sessions and additional training to cover
aspects of the learning outcomes of the award not covered during the first two
training days such as identifying learning styles.
Participants completed reflections and evaluations of the sessions and some
small changes were made as a result of this.
All eight candidates completed their portfolios on the final day of the course
and handed them in for summative assessment.
All eight portfolios were then sent for internal verification, which was
completed on time, with all awards signed off by the end of February.
All said that they feel prepared to take on the role and seven out of eight have
begun carrying out PPS in the workplace prior to the end of the course and
commented about how well this has gone.
Demonstrating business benefit and service improvement
One aspect the project set out to addresses was:
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Barriers to accessing learning…
Apart from the fact that managers are usually busy with work commitments and
attending training is often expensive in terms of cost and time; they have little time
to ‘stand back’ and reflect on practice.
To try to address this, the course was delivered over the minimum number of days
felt necessary to equip participants with the skills and knowledge needed to become
supervisors and to enable them to produce evidence, which would be valid, authentic
and sufficient to meet the learning outcomes of the mentoring award. Two additional
study days were added to the course to provide participants with the option of having
time to write their evidence of knowledge, performance and reflective practice. Use of
this study time was evident as assessors received emails for comments during this
time.
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Delivering improved quality…
During the practical days, each participant spent time supervising and being
supervised and the content of these sessions was based on real work issues.
Participants stated in their evaluations and reflections of the sessions, that in addition
to developing their competence as supervisors, they also valued the opportunity to
access peer professional supervision in a safe environment. Many individual issues
were covered, incorporating diverse issues of quality of service delivery. Two group
supervision sessions were also facilitated by two different group members during the
practical days, which also focused on improving the quality of care delivery.
Seven of the eight participants reported that they had carried out supervision
sessions in their workplaces, with positive outcomes and some of these were
included in the mentoring portfolios as evidence items.
One participant stated on the evaluation “I was able to put the theory into practice in
real terms. It was useful to carry out real sessions with real outcomes and plans to
move forward. Plans were reviewed to show progress and promote problem solving
approaches.” Another said; “The course has been suited to improving my role as a
manager.”
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Skills development and qualifications…
These are some comments from participants:
“In the mentoring sessions we had opportunity to discuss issues, concerns,
successes and failures in a safe environment, observing respect and confidentiality”.
“The mentoring sessions helped me develop into a competent mentor by allowing me
time in a safe, non-threatening, well supported arena to explore different mentoring
styles and responses”.
“I have reflected and developed personally and these sessions have contributed to
my portfolio”.
“As the sessions progressed, we felt more able to challenge when needed, mindful of
differences, e.g. personal and life experiences, and learning styles”.
“Also worked on development of portfolio for award. Compiling portfolio benefitted
course work – a learning experience plus support with generating evidence for my
portfolio”.
All eight participants have successfully completed the Award in Peer
Mentoring.
And priorities:
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CPD for managers & QCF Award - All eight participants have successfully
completed the Award in Peer Mentoring.
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Innovative approach to delivery of qualifications – A blend of theory and
performance both during course days and back in the workplace.
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Person centred approaches… - integral to the content of individual
supervision sessions and evident in the reflective accounts.
Sustainability
The course has been written and updated in light of evaluations. The materials,
handouts and resources, such as contracts, are available and all participants and
SfC have these.
All eight participants have already begun supervising in the workplace.
The two participants who were ‘tasked’ by their CEO, with cascading peer
professional supervision in their service, have started to meet to develop an action
plan to achieve this.
Some of the participants have stated that they intend to maintain their supervision
partnerships.
Here at ARC, we intend to promote PPS and the Award in Peer Mentoring.
Scalability
This will be the toughest challenge. When this was first discussed and costed out at
ARC regional network meeting, services present demonstrated enthusiasm and
support for the introduction of PPS in the locality. However, once the implementation
plan was developed and costed, the enthusiasm waned.
The challenge now is to develop and promote PPS in localities, which is cost effective
in terms of delivery and time, yet prepares competent supervisors who are then able to
continue supervising almost independently of ARC. However, we are willing to
provide some form of ongoing support, perhaps by offering CPD events or a
‘debriefing’ (one to one or group) service to supervisors when needed.
Good Practice and Learning
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The two taught days on Peer Professional Supervision were a vital starting
point, but participants recommended that these be run on consecutive days.
The practice days were appreciated by the participants. All reported
improvement in their practice as supervisors as a result of this opportunity.
The evaluations show that these days are what gave them the confidence to
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take on the role of professional supervisor/mentor.
One participant said “regular practice days enabled learning from practice
and new skills along the way.”
Participants agreed that the eight practical days should have taken place over
eight weeks for continuity, instead of spreading the days over three months.
The eight days of practice were needed to meet the assessment strategy of
the qualification. Should others decide to go ahead with developing PPS
without the qualification, I would recommend some (but not eight full days)
practice sessions and opportunities for supervisors to share and reflect on
their experiences of supervising. I would suggest monthly half-day sessions
until the supervisors gain sufficient confidence to practice independently.
Including the qualification is ‘the icing on the cake’, however, one participant
said ‘Having the qualification makes me feel like I have achieved something
from the course and it is something to build on”. The qualification does
increase the cost, but I still feel that the benefits outweigh the cost and would
recommend its inclusion.
Final thoughts
I have a nursing background and used to carry out and receive clinical supervision,
but this was some time ago and I forgot the positive impact this can have. During the
practice sessions, such a range of issues came up, which participants may not have
had chance to reflect on had this opportunity not arisen. All the feedback reflects this
as well as participants make statements about how the course has helped improve
their practice. This is one of the intended learning outcomes of the course, but I have
been surprised at the extent of this occurring in a measurable way.
It would not be ethical to repeat some of the issues raised and reflected upon during
the mentoring sessions in this report, but the diversity and intensity of the issues and
reflections was over and above what I would have expected. The reflections and
evaluations from the participants indicate that they felt the group arena to be safe,
non-threatening, supportive and confidential, which enhanced the richness of the
outcomes.
Another learning outcome of the course is that practitioners who provide and receive
professional supervision develop from being able to reflect on practice to being
able to effectively reflect in practice and more than one participant stated in their
evaluation that they are aware that they are now carrying out reflection in practice.
This skill takes a while to develop and to see feedback that this has happened is an
added bonus.
For further information about Peer Professional Supervision or the Award in Peer
Mentoring, please contact Gill Shaw at gill.shaw@arcuk.org.uk or by phone on 01246
541676, mobile 0789 467 2178.
GS 12/5/14