Introduction

The opportunities and responsibilities for using leadership rest with all within the work or team setting. The social worker who is a manager cannot abrogate their practice and educational leadership roles by restricting or curbing their activities to administrative management. In this chapter I seek to make the case for social workers who are in management positions to reclaim and reinvigorate their own professional identity. They remain practitioners, responsible for case decisions, the use of current research evidence and fundamentally, the quality of practice through supervision and delivering continuing professional development. But they are failing as social workers if they deny the social workers they manage the educative, reflective and analytical opportunities needed to enable them to provide a continuously improving service. Supervision is a source of professional development, shared reflective analysis and mutual learning. Administrative and management support is important, but not to the exclusion of these professional responsibilities. Supervision is the location of the exchange and synthesis of complex information that enables the social worker manager to make the case and resource decisions they procedurally are unable to delegate to practitioners. Also, by remaining skilled and knowledgeable practitioners and educators, they are in a better position to trust, delegate and grant greater autonomy and individual judgement to the social workers they manage. There is a paradox for social worker managers, however; if they allow their practice knowledge, skill and research awareness to fade away, they become less able to delegate, and of less value in supervision and ensuring the professional development of their team. They progressively move into a general management and administrative mode of working, and fail to promote the professional capabilities and individual judgements of social workers.

Supervision practice and standards

Despite the longstanding professional traditions and standards in reflective supervision (Mattinson, 1975; Kadushin, 1976), and the understanding of the role of the supervisor, as enabler and helper, backing up and showing trust (Young, 1965), an enduring proportion of social workers in surveys and studies report not receiving it in adequate quantity or quality. In a survey of social workers in direct practice, 63 per cent reported receiving supervision at least once a month, 16 per cent every two months, 7 per cent every three months and 10 per cent rarely or never.