1. Warren Matofsky, Sussex CAMHS Lynn Suter, LifeCentre
Sussex DWDW Community of Practice “Supervision & Creating a Culture of Reflective Practice”
Warren Matofsky, Sussex CAMHS
Lynn Suter, LifeCentre
Tom Bostock, Brighton Wellbeing Service

2. The Supervision CoP Plan
930 Welcome, intros, who’s in the room
940 What’s your experience of Supervision?
1000 Qualities of a skilled supervisor
1030 Supervision & reflective practice
1115 break
1145 Supervision in action
1230 Promoting a reflective practice
1250 Feedback

3. Thanks for the agenda Brighton Wellbeing Sevice YMCA-Downslink
East Sussex EWT
Aspens/Autism Sussex
Sussex CAMHS
E-motion-online counselling
LifeCentre
Brighton Schools Wellbeing Service
West Sussex YES

4. What is supervision? BPS, 2018 The 4 objectives of supervision are:
-to provide practitioners with consultation on their work

5. Objectives of supervision II
-to enhance the quality and competence of practice

6. Objectives of supervision III
-to offer intellectual challenge enabling reflection, transformational learning and psychological support to maximise their responsibility for appropriate self-care

7. Objectives of supervision IV
-to contribute to the CPD of both practitioner and supervisor by developing competence in the use and practice of supervision.

8. What’s your experience of supervision?
Film & buzz (0-118)

9. Task model of supervision (Hawkins & Shohet 2006):
Learning & growth
Support
Standards

10. Your experience of supervision
Think of a time recently where you have been well supported around one of these tasks?
This could be supervisor, manager or colleague
What were the skills & qualities of the person that enabled their support to be effective?

11. Supervision in Action Hopes Inter-agency consultation & supervision
Enabling mental health to be everyone’s business
Community approach to wellbeing & resilience
The new workforce in schools & community
Fears
Limited availability of specialist supervision
Difficult work in difficult times
Staff wellbeing as significant area of concern
Service cuts, austerity & rising demand

12. Consultation versus Supervision
Clear contract & authorisation in both
Consultant responsible for the consultation but not the practice of consultees
Supervisor has duty of care in relation to supervisees’ practice & extends over time
Many common leadership styles, processes & traps across both types of group

13. School consultation group
Boundaries- monthly, 2 hr, school based meeting with pastoral team; all expected to attend- but often pulled away by emergencies
Task- promote reflective practice, explore dilemmas of being a skilled helper
Leadership-school setting & teacher model; facilitate learning (not dictate it)
Defences-dependant followership; flight/fight defences
Key theme: the challenge of thinking rather than doing

14. School consultation group II
Authorisation school SLT & reviewed annually Evaluation school consultation measure (Jackson, 2002); group & SLT feedback

15. What’s going on here? Your task
How is the group getting on with its task?
How’s the group feeling?
How does this relate to the work being described?
How does school culture play out in the group?

16. Claire comments that she has someone to talk about and Zoe says she would like to mention someone. I comment that there’s only time for one more person and ask who we should focus on. Claire proceeds without checking with Zoe and begins with reference to a. girl’s suicide attempt and her experience of hearing voices. Claire describes supportive conversations with the 15 year old young person. She describes being unsure how to respond to the young person’s disclosure about hearing voices. Claire describes, with increasing emphasis, how she told the young woman that she sometimes hears a voice stating “have that chocolate”.- this generates laughter in the group. She asks about what she can do. There are questions about the girl in class and being asked to leave by teachers. I acknowledge the importance of normalising such unusual experiences. Claire describes how she’ll be expressing distress one minute and then just says , “oh its time for French”; then gets up & wanders off. Others in the group identify with Claire’s challenge and the way students take advantage of support staff in order to avoid lessons. There are a number of suggestions about the need for tight boundaries about sessions and the group seem more comfortable generating suggestions about how this could be achieved.

17. Message 1
This extract begins with some competition between Claire and Zoe about who will use the space. This may be seen as an indication of what was to follow in the discussion, as tension in the relationship between teachers and support staff begin to surface. The discussion of the young person’s distress is rapidly closed down by Claire’s pointed description of how she normalises the young woman’s experience (the voice of chocolate). She made her comment in a rather exaggerated way that seemed designed to generate shared laughter and banter in the group. The joking allows the group to avoid staying with the young person’s distress that is subsequently constructed as a resource for manipulating others. In this way the discussion moves away from understanding what might be going on for the young woman and her relationship with Claire, to how she can be kept in class.

18. Message 2
The anger at the student’s impromptu departure could further be considered in the context of inter-group relations between teaching staff and the support workers. The contrast between the teacher’s control over the departure of the young person from class and the young person’s control over the ending of the support session, may highlight for the group their low status and limited power within the school. Their demand for boundaries around time with the student could be seen as an attempt to regain some control. However, such control comes at the expense of limiting the possibilities of their supportive relationship.

19. Message 3
This focus on how Claire can control the contact with the student, diverts attention away from the significance of endings for the student and the feelings this might generate for the teacher, the support worker and the young person. The feeling of being taken advantage of remains unprocessed as the impact on Claire of the separation remains unexplored. The challenge for the student in leaving Claire is not considered and a “doing mode” (dominant in schools) takes over with a focus on managing boundaries. This may relate to wider cultural attitudes in the school that see the intensity of relationships between staff and students as in some way taboo. At other times the group has allowed members to consider the ordinariness of the intensity of relationships between staff and students and thereby left them more sensitive to the impact of separations.

20. How can you promote Supervision & culture of reflective practice?
Overcome barriers ( )
How can you promote in your role
-as supee & supor?
-as team member?

21. Further supervision training
MindEd-