A professional practice benchmark for RCC supervision – the Seven-eyed model
Residential Child Care needs to set its professional practice benchmark for Supervision.
NCERCC are proposing the Seven-eyed model and look forwards to discussion.
Download the Seven-eyed supervision document here
It proceeds step-by-step, it is comprehensive, it provides insights, it is child-centred.
A further practice development could be Supervision circles supporting all those involved as supervisors. Sometimes there are tensions within supervision that come from the material to be addressed – managerial, safeguarding, developmental – and people need to work with another/others to think through issues.
Residential Child Care needs equal professional standards as social work/care colleagues.
Many LAs are now investing in the training of Reflective Supervision across their children’s services social work/care staff with supervisory responsibility, and /or who are practice leaders.
Supervision inevitably is involved with practice leadership
For child and family social work reflective supervision is integral to meeting the knowledge and skills part of the Post-qualifying standard: knowledge and skills statement for child and family practice supervisors May 2018 Post-qualifying standard: knowledge and skills statement for child and family practice supervisors (publishing.service.gov.uk)
It also is within the Knowledge and skills statement for practice leaders March 2018 Knowledge and skills statement for practice leaders (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Developing excellent practitioners. Critically appraise theory, the best evidence and rationale for different practice approaches. Select robust methodologies to form an overarching practice framework. Identify the skills needed to practise within the complexity of children’s and families’ lives, and in particular the population being served by the organisation. Secure the resources and support needed to implement the practice framework and shape, in partnership with others, the current and future quality of practice through effective training and sustained professional development for all staff and throughout a practice career. Recognise and utilise the resource that children, families and communities can bring to the development of staff and services.
Quality Standards being descriptive lack detail, the RCC profession needs to set its own expectations.
Positive Relationships Regulation 11
2 (x) are provided with supervision and support to enable them to understand and manage their own feelings and responses to the behaviour and emotions of children, and to help children to do the same
Schedule 2 Employment of staff Regulation 33
(4) The registered person must ensure that all employees—
(b)receive practice-related supervision by a person with appropriate experience
A sector set benchmark for Supervision in Residential Child Care Professional Capabilities
The RCC sector needs to assert its professional stance and join its professional colleagues with the expectation that supervisors support the development of critically reflective practice through providing reflective supervision and adopting a strengths-based model to supervision including coaching and mentoring
In their description of their Reflective Supervision Resource Reflective supervision: Resource Pack (2017) | Research in Practice Research in Practice say “A good supervisor is able to contain the supervisee’s anxiety, stress and hope and model the kind of relationship practitioners are expected to build with children and families. A supervision experience should enable the practitioner to walk away feeling less anxious than when they walked in, and with a clearer view of what the child, family and organisation require, what actions are most likely to produce the best results, and what to do next”.
