Professional supervision is considered a key aspect of effective social work practice. In much of the world, front-line social work practitioners prioritise social work supervision as essential to ensuring a supportive working environment. This is crucially the case while working in ethically and politically contentious environments (such as working with refugees). Despite its centrality to effective practice, access to professionally meaningful supervision is nowadays seen by employers as a ‘luxury’, rather than as an integral part of front-line practice. On many occasions, the responsibility for accessing and paying for supervision is delegated to practitioners. Different models of supervision have been proposed over the years. This article provides a unique reflection on the creation and function of a ‘radical supervision’ approach, developed by practitioners and academics in Greece to deal with the complex professional and emotional dilemmas that emerged in the context of working with refugees. By ‘radical supervision’, the participants and authors refer to a non-hierarchical, peer-support supervision model that also prioritises collective action and mobilisation as regards structural challenges, thus departing from than the traditional individualistic approach to supervision. The group consisted of seven front-line practitioners and two academics. All practitioners worked in the field of refugee services. The supervisory group met regularly over a period of eight months from December 2020 to July 2021. The group followed the principles of participatory action research to analyse and report findings and reflections, while the analysis, as well the procedure of the supervision per se, were based on the liberation health model.
Amthor, R.C., Goldberg, B., Hausbauer, P., Lander, B. and Wintergerst, T. (2021) Kreft/Mielenz Wörterbuch Soziale Arbeit (Auflage 9), Beltz: Weinheim.
Andrews, G. (2013) Thyra J. Edwards: Black Activist in the Global Freedom Struggle, Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press.
Baum, F., MacDougall, C. and Smith, D. (2006) Participatory action research, Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, 60(10): 854–7, doi: 10.1136/jech.2004.028662.
Beddoe, L. (2012) External supervision in social work: power, space, risk, and the search for safety, Australian Social Work, 65(2): 197–213, doi: 10.1080/0312407X.2011.591187.
Belkin-Martinez, D. (2014) The liberation health model: theory and practice, in D. Belkin-Martinez and A. Fleck-Henderson (eds) Social Justice in Clinical Practice: A Liberation Health Framework for Social Work, New York: Routledge, pp 9–28.
Belkin-Martinez, D. and Fleck-Henderson, A. (eds) (2014) Social Justice in Clinical Practice: A Liberation Health Framework for Social Work, New York: Routledge.
Brashears, F. (1995) Supervision as social work practice: a reconceptualization, Social Work, 40(5): 692–9.
Chapman, C. and Withers, A.J. (2019) A Violent History of Benevolence: Interlocking Oppression in the Moral Economics of Social Working, Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Ferguson, I., Ioakimidis, V. and Lavalette, M. (2018) Global Social Work in a Political Context: Radical Perspectives, Bristol: Policy Press.
Gardner, F. (2021) Embedding critical reflection across the curriculum, in K. O’ Donoghue and L. Engelbrecht (eds) The Routledge International Handbook of Social Work Supervision, London: Routledge, pp 462–72.
Human Rights Watch (2018) Greece: 13,000 Still Trapped on Islands, https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/06/greece-13000-still-trapped-islands.
Ife, J. (2008) Human Rights and Social Work: Towards Rights-Based Practice, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
IFSW (International Federation of Social Workers European Region e.V.) (2010) Standards in Social Work Practice Meeting Human Rights, A. Agius (ed), Berlin: International Federation of Social Workers European Region e.V.
Ioakimidis, V. and Teloni, D.D. (2013) Greek social work and the never-ending crisis of the welfare state, Critical and Radical Social Work, 1(1): 31–49, doi: 10.1332/204986013X665965.
Jones, C. (1983) State Social Work and the Working-Class, Basingstoke: Macmillan.
Kostecki, T., Hodge, L., Dervisovski, V. and Fitzgerald, C. (2021) Beyond a sugarcoated pill: critical approaches to social work field supervision, Research on Social Work Practice, 31(7): 770–9, doi: 10.1177/1049731521996475.
Maniatis, G. (2018) From a crisis of management to humanitarian crisis management, South Atlantic Quarterly, 117(4): 905–13, doi: 10.1215/00382876-7166068.
Medecins Sans Frontiers (2016) Europe, don’t turn your back on asylum: take people in, https://www.msf.org/es/node/39951.
Noble, C. (2016) Towards critical social work supervision, in B. Pease, S. Goldingay, N. Hosken and S. Nipperess (eds) Doing Critical Social Work: Transformative Practices for Social Justice, New York: Routledge, pp 64–51.
O’Neill, P. and Del Mar Fariña, M. (2018) Constructing critical conversations in social work supervision: creating change, Clinical Social Work, 46(4): 298–309, doi: 10.1007/s10615-018-0681-6.
Rankine, M. (2018) How critical are we? Revitalising critical reflection in supervision, Advances in Social Work and Welfare Education, 20(2): 31–46, doi: 10.3316/informit.032240745093272.
Reisch, M. and Andrews, J. (2002) The Road Not Taken: A History of Radical Social work in the United States, New York: Routledge.
Reason, P. and Bradbury, H. (2001) Handbook of Action Research, London: Sage.
Schilde, K. (2003) First aid squad in the class struggle, in S. Hering and B. Waaldijk (eds) History of Social work in Europe (1900–1960): Female Pioneers and Their Influence on the Development of International Social Organizations, Opladen: Soziale Arbeit.
Solidarity with Migrants (2022) Announcement against the close down of Elaionas, https://fb.watch/eoP87J2v_j/.
SWAN Greece (2022) Announcement for the common struggle of social workers and refugees, https://socialworkers.gr/prsf-mtn.html.
Teloni, D.D. (2020) Social work and Covid-19 in Greece, in M. Lavalette, V. Ioakimidis and I. Ferguson (eds) Social Work and the Covid-19 Pandemic International Insights, Bristol: Policy Press, pp 87–94.
Teloni, D.D., Dedotsi, S., Lazanas, A. and Telonis, A. (2021) Social work with refugees: examining social workers’ role and practice in times of crisis in Greece, International Social Work, October, 2021, doi: 10.1177%2F00208728211046980.
Teloni, D.D., Dedotsi, S. and Telonis, A.G. (2020) Refugee ‘crisis’ and social services in Greece: social workers’ profile and working conditions, European Journal of Social Work, 23(6): 1005–18, doi: 10.1080/13691457.2020.1772729.
Tsui, M.S. (1997) The roots of social work supervision, The Clinical Supervisor, 15(2): 191–98, doi: 10.1300/J001v15n02_14.
United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees UNCHR (2022) Operational data portal, Mediterranean situation, https://data.unhcr.org/en/situations/mediterranean.
May 2022 onwards | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
---|---|---|---|
Abstract Views | 1310 | 401 | 86 |
Full Text Views | 1068 | 884 | 6 |
PDF Downloads | 772 | 576 | 9 |
Institutional librarians can find more information about free trials here