Faculty of Education

Conference "Professional Supervision: Common threads, different patterns" 2010

The supervisor’s new clothes: Vulnerability, risk and resilience discourses in supervision

Keynote Address: Liz Beddoe, Head of the School of the Counselling, Human Services and Social Work (NZ)

Supervision has been revitalised in the new century in large part due to the impacts of 'risk thinking' and finds itself responsible for everything.  Supervisors will improve accountability, reduce stress, keep workers safe, keep clients safe, keep the employing organisations safe from public failure and critical scrutiny, improve resilience, and manage risk. To what extent should supervisors be cast as the saviours of practitioners in social health and social care?  Morrison (2001) in adding the 'mediation' function to supervision, acknowledged the tensions in the supervision encounter  and identified the  potential role of supervisors as a both a buffer and a conduit between professional practitioners and managers. How well do we carry out that function in 21^st Century organisations?

 Key themes in this paper are:

• Do we expect too much from supervision?
• Does supervision focus too much on practitioner vulnerability and therefore assume that practitioners need constant protection?
• What does the risk and resilience discourse mean for supervision practice?
• Are supervisors 'health and safety' operatives or agents of inetellectual and organisational change?
• Does supervision let toxic organisations and bereft government policies off the hook?

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The supervisor’s new clothes: Vulnerability, risk and resilience discourses in supervision

See Liz Beddoe's Bio