Towards a psychosocial formulation of newly qualified social worker supervision: bringing the self into supervision

ABSTRACT

This paper details the evaluation of a psychosocial model of reflective supervision piloted by the authors with a group of Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) supervisors who supported newly qualified social workers. The authors proposed that a psychosocial approach to reflective supervision, based on the integration of Kleinian object-relations and systemic theory, had the potential to reduce the anxiety of newly qualified social workers as they entered the profession. The supervisors undertook training in the model online over three separate days, with supervisors encouraged to apply the ideas between sessions and reflect upon their experiences with peers in a community of practice model. Although evidencing a reduction in NQSW anxiety proved problematic, the evaluation did demonstrate that the psychosocial approach to supervision was welcomed by the supervisors, and that it brought the selves of both the supervisors and supervisee into supervision, through an exploration of relationships, identity, and emotion. Organisational resistance in the form of social defences against anxiety that denied the emotionality and subjectivity of social worker experience were highlighted by supervisors; however, these appear to be mitigated by the community of practice element of the model.

KEYWORDS:

• Social work supervision
• Newly Qualified Social Workers
• Systemic social work
• Psychosocial social work
• Psychoanalytic social work
• Supervision Training
• Anxiety and defence

Introduction

This project was born out of conversations with Local Authority Children’s Services departments who highlighted their Assessed and Supported Year in Employment (ASYE) supervisors expressed a lack of confidence in delivering reflective supervision to newly qualified social workers (NQSWs). In an attempt to respond to this, we proposed a psychosocial model of reflective supervision based on the integration of Kleinian object-relations and systemic theory, hypothesising that such an approach to supervision would support supervisors to address the multiple and complex web of factors that influence NQSWs. Such an approach could subsequently promote a containing environment for NQSWs, which reduces the anxiety present as they form their new professional identities as social workers. The researchers piloted a psychosocial training model of supervision with a cohort of ASYE supervisors to establish the usefulness of the model. Implications for NQSW supervision and social work practice more broadly are then discussed.

NQSWs and the Assessed and Supported Year in Employment

The ASYE was a recommendation of the Social Work Reform Board with the aim of assisting and assessing NQSWs entering the social work profession in England and Wales through a programme of support in their first year of practice (Skills for Care, 2021). As part of the ASYE each NQSW is allocated an ASYE supervisor, a role separate from their line manager. The ASYE supervisor’s role is to support the NQSW and assess their progress, and they are often responsible for providing the ASYE’s reflective supervision.

There is now a body of evidence that indicates that social workers experience high degrees of work-related stress and burnout, resulting in workforce attrition (Johnson et al., 2021; Kearns & McArdle, 2012; Ravalier & Boichat, 2018). This appears particularly acute for NQSWs, exacerbated by the complexity of entering the social work profession and forming their new professional identities as social workers (Carpenter et al., 2012, 2015; Jack & Donnellan, 2010; Johnson et al., 2021). Carpenter et al. (2012) reported that the overall proportion of NQSWs they surveyed ‘reporting clinically significant stress … (was) around 31% at the start of the (ASYE) to between 40% and 33% at the end’ (viii). Johnson et al. (2021) reported that nearly 65% of the NQSWs they surveyed agreed that ‘I feel stressed in my job’ (p. 16). Qualitative studies such as Jack and Donnellan (2010) suggest that the pressures of practice often percolated into NQSWs’ personal lives leading to issues with sleep and left ‘little time to stand back (and) reflect’ (p. 309). The COVID-19 pandemic appears to have further impacted NQSW wellbeing, with 82% of the NQSWs Johnson et al. (2021) surveyed reporting increased work-related stress.

Social work supervision

In her review of the UK Child and Families Social Work System, Munro (2011) provides the following description of social work supervision, which provides a useful starting point for the issues discussed in this paper:

… (the) core mechanism for helping social workers critically reflect on the understanding they are forming of the family, of considering their emotional response and whether this is adversely affecting their reasoning, and for making decisions about how best to help. (para. 4.10)

Numerous studies have concluded how NQSW’s supervision experiences are key to their learning, practice and wellbeing (Carpenter et al., 2012; Grant et al., 2017; Jack & Donnellan, 2010). Indeed, Carpenter et al. (2012) evaluation of the AYSE observed ‘a marked effect … on ameliorating stress … (with) those NQSWs who received full supervision … largely protected from the increases in stress’ (ix). Despite this the literature paints a mixed picture of NQSWs’ supervision experiences. Concerns relate to supervision frequency, with Johnson et al. (2021) noting that 30% of NQSWs received reflective supervision less than once a month, and Sharpe et al. (2011) adding that many NQSWs felt they needed supervision more than once a month. Manthorpe et al. (2014) found that NQSWs with less frequent supervision were less likely to feel they had a manageable workload and feel engaged with their job. Moreover, several studies highlight how NQSW supervision appears dominated by agency priorities at the expense of critical analysis and reflection (Grant et al., 2017; Jack & Donnellan, 2010; Sharpe et al., 2011). Jack and Donnellan (2010) noted that such supervision fails to recognise the person within the developing professional, something that led to a rapid decline in NQSWs’ wellbeing. Such a picture is consistent with the wider social work supervision literature, which highlights incongruence between the models of reflective supervision espoused and the reality of supervision practice dominated by a culture of performance indicators, audit and inspection (Beddoe, 2010; Turner-Daly & Jack, 2017; Wilkins et al., 2017).

While providing NQSWs with reflective supervision was a core objective of the ASYE, there appears to be a mixed picture in respect of supervision training provided to ASYE supervisors. Berry-Lound and Rowe (2013) found that ‘just over two fifths (of ASYE supervisors) felt the support received for their supervision … did not meet their expectations’ (p. 2), and that a third of supervisors had not received any supervision training. As one manager in Jack and Donnellan’s (2010) study noted ‘one day you’re a worker and the next you’re a manager … it just happens and you’re expected to get on with it’ (p. 310). Manthorpe et al. (2014) study also highlighted the issue of conflating the training needs of ASYE supervisors and social work managers, stressing the unique supervision needs of NQSWs as they transition into the profession.

The literature therefore indicates that despite supervision appearing central to NQSWs’ experience, it appears inconsistently applied, driven by agency priorities at the expense of reflection and personal development, and at times delivered by poorly trained supervisors. Considering the high amounts of anxiety experienced by NQSWs as they develop a new professional identity, we proposed that a psychosocial approach to supervision, which recognises and responds to the interplay between anxiety and NQSWs’ experience, is better suited to their supervision needs.

What is the psychosocial?

The term ‘psychosocial’ is broadly found applied in two separate discourses with differing meanings. Firstly, in health sciences, where it is often hyphenated to indicate and analyse different ‘psycho’ and ‘social’ elements of a study (Hollway, 2006). Secondly, and of interest to this project, is a canon of literature that seeks to understand human experience beyond individual – social dualism, often drawing on ideas from psychoanalysis and sociology to study human relations in a social context (Frosh, 2003; Frosh & Baraitser, 2008; Hollway, 2006).

Psychosocial approaches to social work practice have their roots in the psycho-dynamic therapeutic casework traditions prevalent in the 1960/70’s (Hollis, 1964; Mattinson, 1975), which subsequently lost favour, having been critiqued by structural approaches associated with radical social work. Preston-Shoot and Agass’s (1990) classic text Making Sense of Social Work presented a psychosocial model of social work practice, integrating systemic and object-relations approaches to understand the ‘person in situ’. Although it was not until the arrival of relationship-based practice models, synonymous with the work of Ruch (2005, Ruch, 2018 and Ruch et al. (2018) that psychosocial approaches fully re-emerged. Here, ideas from psychoanalysis, anti-oppressive practice, systemic theory, reflective practice and attachment theory are integrated to form a model of social work practice that acknowledges the ‘inseparable nature of the internal and external worlds of individuals and the importance of integrated – psycho-social … responses to social problems’ (Ruch, 2005, p. 113).

Like relationship-based practice and the model outlined by Preston-Shoot and Agass (1990), we argue that a psychosocial approach to social work practice can be attempted by the integration of psychoanalytic and systemic approaches. Such an integration is, however, problematic, as psychoanalytic approaches are associated with therapist expertise, the antithesis of a second order systemic position that problematises the notion of therapists as ‘experts’ and the truth claims of their socially constructed professional discourse (Hollway, 2006; Selvini et al., 1980). However, we argue that a psychosocial approach can be achieved through a dialogue between Milan systemic practice and object-relations theory. This recognises the NQSW as a ‘person in situation’, and the interplay between their formulation of a professional identity as a social worker, and their emotional experience.

Object relations - anxiety, defence and containment

The idea that individuals unconsciously manage anxiety drawn from the dynamics of internal drives through defence mechanisms is central to the pioneering psychoanalytic theory of Freud (1926). Klein (1946) expanded upon this, arguing that such unconscious dynamics were primarily intersubjective, with infants employing projection and projective identification with their carers as a defence mechanism to manage anxiety, and here a Kleinian object-relations approach to the management of anxiety emerges. Bion (1962) built on this, theorising containment as a psychic process whereby the child projects unsymbolised, anxiety provoking feelings of ‘nameless dread’ into their carer, which the carer processes and returns to the child in a tolerable form, thereby processing anxiety provoking experiences. When containment is absent high levels of anxiety can disrupt thought processes making it harder to effectively consider anxiety provoking phenomena, and individuals can defend themselves from such emotions by detaching emotionally from their experiences, sometimes collectively in the form of social defences against anxiety (Bion, 1962; Menzies Lyth, 1959).

Milan systemic practice and reflexivity

Systemic practice argues that relationships, socially constructed narratives, and context are central to the understanding of individual experience (Flaskas, 2007). This stems from Bateson’s (1972) pioneering systems theory which posits families as cybernetic systems with circular patterns of self-regulating interactions between family members, their wider networks and contexts. Here ‘problems’ are interpersonal in nature, embedded in patterns of meaning and interpretation within relationships. The Milan Team were heavily influenced by Bateson’s ideas, and employed the concept of Circularity in their work to support families to explore these circular patterns of meaning and interpretation. Multiple Hypotheses would be generated to see which ideas fitted best for families, supporting them to explore how such patterns might be influencing the issues they were facing (Selvini et al., 1980). Initially, the Milan Team attempted to take a stance of Neutrality, attempting to remain as neutral as possible in their therapeutic work and not align with individuals (Cecchin, 1987). However, having been influenced by feminist and post-modernist ideas, this was deemed problematic, as how could a therapist remain truly neutral when influenced by their own systems and narratives? The professional stance of Curiosity was subsequently adopted, implicit in the idea of hypothesising, which continuously questions ours’ and others’ premises and is open to multiple and competing perspectives (Cecchin, 1987). The Milan Team’s abandonment of neutrality marked the advent of the Second Order Cybernetic movement in systemic practice, characterised by a mutually influencing relationship between therapist and client. The acknowledgement of the mutually influencing relationship therefore required Reflexivity, an approach to reflective practice that both acknowledges the constructionist power of language, and, analogous with object-relations approaches, encourages us to consider the emotionality of our experiences and our emotional communication with others (Cousins, 2013).

Psychosocial supervision

We proposed that the integration of these systemic and psychoanalytic ideas could provide a psychosocial model of supervision that is better placed to meet NQSWs’ supervision needs, providing a model that provides containment of the high levels of anxiety and stress experienced by NQSWs as they form their professional identity as social workers. Given the high levels of stress and anxiety experienced by NQWSs, and indeed social workers more broadly, adopting a psychoanalytic approach to the management of anxiety, like object relations, appears pertinent. The object-relations perspective provides a model for the management of anxiety and stress experienced by NQSWs, detailing how this can be processed through containment, or avoided through potentially unhealthy defence mechanisms. Several scholars have theorised how social work practice can call forth aspects of workers’ selves, creating powerful emotions that result in blind spots as workers view their work through the beliefs, values, and schemas that constitute their own web of reality (Howe, 2008; Ingram, 2013; Mandell, 2008). A theorisation likely to be felt more acutely by NQSWs forming their professional identities as social workers, as the unique histories, identities and belief systems which constitute their web of reality interact with their practice experiences, generating powerful emotions such as anxiety. Drawing on object-relations theory, Ward (2018) argues the containment of such emotions involves, ‘ … social workers learning how to understand themselves, especially in terms of how their own personal history may resonate in the present’ (p.60). We argue that ideas from Milan systemic practice, and the concept of reflexivity, provide a theoretical framework that supports NQSWs to explore how their personal histories, beliefs and identities resonate in their practice experiences by exploring the sources of powerful emotions, such as anxiety. Such a process of exploration in supervision provides containment of anxiety, and therefore does not require the use of individual or social unconscious defences.

The training

In light of our theorisation of the psychosocial outlined above, a training programme was devised for ASYE Supervisors which covered the following theory:

An introduction to object-relations theory

The object-relations model of anxiety was outlined, and how processes, such as projection, projective identification, defence mechanisms and containment can be employed to make sense of NQSWs’ emotional experience. Here, ASYE supervisors were encouraged to consider the importance of containment in supervision, and how failure to contain emotions experienced by NQSWs may lead to maladaptive defence mechanisms. Social defences against anxiety were explored and ASYE supervisors were asked to reflect upon how anxiety was managed in their organisations.

An introduction to systemic theory, Milan systemic theory, and reflexivity

An overview of systemic theory was provided, and ASYE supervisors were invited to consider how both their own and their NQSWs’ beliefs were influenced by the systems within which they were situated. The trainers shared their own systemic genograms modelling how their own backgrounds influenced their beliefs and subsequent social work practice. The ASYE supervisors then explored their own genograms and were encouraged to undertake genogram sessions with their NQSWs in supervision. Ideas such as hypothesising, circularity and curiosity were modelled to demonstrate how these could be applied in supervision to support NQSWs to explore systemic influences on their practice and their professional identity as a social worker. Reflexivity and the importance of exploring the emotionality of social work practice were introduced.

Grrraaacceeesss

Burnham’s (2012) systemic mnemonic the social GRRRAAACCEEESSS was employed to further explore the impact of identity and difference in both social work practice, and between supervisor and supervisee. Here, ASYE supervisors were invited to consider how their GRRRAAACCEEESSS influenced their practice, and were encouraged to then support their supervisees to explore how their GRRRAAACCEEESSS might be influencing their practice in supervision.

A psychosocial model

ASYE supervisors were introduced to the psychosocial model outlined above, detailing how an application of systemic ideas in supervision could create containment for NQSWs.

The training consisted of 3 day-long training sessions online over Zoom, with monthly intervals to allow participants the opportunity to employ the ideas taught between sessions, and then reflect upon their experiences in the training with their peers in a community of practice model. Sixty participants were recruited via an Eventbrite page which was sent to Local Authorities with existing relationships with the HEI. All 60 attendees identified as ASYE supervisors drawn from a variety of social work settings. Participant attendance was somewhat fluid, with attendees often having to leave the training to answer important phone calls or attend meetings, an indication of the pressures they were under. As a result, around 50–60 attendees were in the training at any one time.

The three-day length of the program meant we were restricted in the number of ideas and concepts we could share, meaning not all the ideas we felt pertinent could be included. Therefore, ideas that proved central to the relationship between identity, experience, emotions and their containment were prioritised, and unlike the relationship-based practice model, attachment theory was not included.

Methodology

In undertaking this evaluation, we sought to establish the ASYE supervisors’ experiences employing the ideas taught in their supervision, their perception of the usefulness of the psychosocial model for ASYE supervision, as well as whether their confidence in delivering supervision had been impacted by the training. The monthly gaps between sessions therefore allowed attendees time to implement the ideas in their supervision practice and assess their usefulness. A qualitative research methodology was employed which gathered data from an hour long semi-structured focus group held after the completion of the final days training. This involved the delivery of open-ended questions to the 40 participants who voluntarily attended (Barbour, 2011). The discussion was recorded using an encrypted mobile telephone, transcribed verbatim, and analysed using the six-step Thematic Analysis outlined by Braun and Clarke (2006). The focus group approach was preferred to questionnaires (often used to evaluate training) as the presence of the moderator allowed the probing and prompting of attendees to explore or expand upon their responses, providing more detailed data. Ethical approval for this study was granted by the HEI and informed consent gained from all participants.

Findings

The findings of this study highlighted several intersecting themes which are outlined below. These highlighted how the psychosocial approach to supervision appeared to have several benefits for the ASYE supervisors, but that such an approach was anxiety provoking and represented a challenge to the social work agencies within which they worked.

Confidence navigating interpersonal spaces

This theme outlined the benefits highlighted by the ASYE supervisors of applying psychosocial ideas to navigate the interpersonal spaces between supervisors and NQSWs, and how the training increased their confidence exploring this. For example, many supervisors highlighted how the psychosocial ideas helped them to have challenging conversations with their NQSWs around difficult topics, such as difference and identity:

(it) can be really difficult if you are not used to having conversations about difference and supporting people to be reflective … and (the training) really enriched those conversations and made them much easier to have

Supervisors also highlighted how an attention to a NQSW’s reflexivity, and in particular aspects of difference, often enhanced supervision, addressing unspoken difficulties:

it enabled me to think about the relationship between myself and the NQSW … it wasn’t the best relationship … and (the) social graces really helped me unpick it and we found out it was her previous experience of being line managed … where it was my assumption that it was something I wasn’t doing right

‘it enabled me to think about the relationship between myself and the NQSW … it wasn’t the best relationship … and (the) social graces really helped me unpick it and we found out it was her previous experience of being line managed … where it was my assumption that it was something I wasn’t doing right’

Moreover, the ASYE supervisors highlighted how the psychosocial ideas encouraged them to consider their own reflexivity and what they brought to supervision as supervisors:

it’s been helpful for giving me a framework and recognise where I’ve projected my own feelings and emotions of how a conversation might impact on someone else

Social work as a psychosocial endeavour

Interestingly the ASYE supervisors also reflected upon the parallels between applying the psychosocial ideas in supervision and in work with service users, noting the similarities between the two spheres:

there is a very strong correlation between how we work with families and how I can use those techniques to work with my (NQSW)

A point further highlighted by an ASYE supervisor who described how applying the psychosocial ideas in supervision had improved their own practice with families:

we do direct work with families and considering these tools with supervisees in some ways helps us reflect more deeply on that, not just in supervising sessions but within the work we do with our families

Moreover, feedback from the ASYE supervisors also indicated that the psychosocial ideas were percolating into their NQSW’s practice, a synergy encapsulated in the feedback below:

‘I’ve had feedback from my supervisees that they’ve been thinking about things in a different way … it’s a reminder that reflective supervision isn’t something else to do on top of what we are doing it should be the theme running through everything

‘I’ve had feedback from my supervisees that they’ve been thinking about things in a different way … it’s a reminder that reflective supervision isn’t something else to do on top of what we are doing it should be the theme running through everything

Anxiety

Supervising in such a manner was not without its challenges, however, with several ASYE supervisors highlighting that applying psychosocial ideas created a certain amount of anxiety, for both themselves and their supervisees, as they discussed complex and sometimes emotive issues:

I was scared to do it as well, putting myself in there and asking them how they felt was actually quite telling for me … I realised I am asking them to reflect about themselves … so I have to give more of myself back so, yeah, it really helped develop the relationship more. Even the team meetings have become a bit more family orientated I suppose …

The ASYE Supervisors shared that this anxiety was exacerbated by the foreignness of the psychosocial ideas to supervisees, who appeared somewhat uncertain of such a different approach:

They were laughing saying, what’s going on here, are you trying something out on us, so it was a little bit unnerving at first

Moreover, the thought of being the container of the supervisees emotions was in itself challenging for ASYE Supervisors:

It’s shown me the importance of being a bit brave and trying things out and being prepared to be that container, depending on what comes out of those sessions and feeling confident in your ability to do that

Organisational challenges

A major limitation of the training highlighted by the ASYE supervisors was that, while they thought the content of the training was useful, the pressures they felt at work in terms of caseloads and other agency priorities made them wonder how applicable the training was to their roles, and whether they had time to apply it. A point highlighted by ASYE supervisors dropping in and out of training to attend meetings, and in their feedback in the focus group:

so I think it is very useful, (but) whether or not we can use it is to its full extent because of the pressures of workloads, caseloads and so on is another question

Some supervisors highlighted how such pressures created distractions such as emails, particularly in online supervision:

If there is any way of locking me into this meeting room so I can’t access anything else [laughs] on my laptop that would be perfect

Indeed, several ASYE supervisors highlighted how reflective supervision did not appear to be established in some LAs and that the ideas we were sharing were in marked contrast to the agency culture. A point encapsulated in the feedback below:

I don’t think I ever really experienced reflective supervision by managers I was supervised by

In contrast, several of the ASYE supervisors highlighted how the community of practice aspect of the training facilitated reflexivity, with some sharing how this allowed them to explore their experiences of implementing the training with others and learn from their peers:

it’s not like you’ve been given training, you go away and it’s all over. You’re coming back and reflecting on what’s happened and it enabled me to think about the relationship between myself and the NQSW

And

it has made us really think and absolutely lovely to have the opportunity to work with different colleagues from different local authorities, because I think we’ve learnt from each other as well as learning from the material, so I’ve really valued that

Discussion

The findings of this study indicate the usefulness of the psychosocial supervision frame for ASYE supervisors, highlighting how such ideas allowed them to explore the psychosocial influences on NQSWs and the supervision process. This allowed the exploration of emotive issues, such as identity and difference, and how these connected with the experiences of the NQSWs and their supervisors, in doing so bringing more of the ‘self’, of both the NQSWs and their supervisors, into supervision. This study adds weight to the idea that there is a close ‘fit’ between social workers’ personal and professional selves and that the integration of the two is important in NQSWs transition into the social work profession (Harrison & Ruch, 2007; Jack & Donnellan, 2010; Kearns & McArdle, 2012). Moreover, there is some evidence from this study that the psychosocial ideas shared in supervision influenced both the NQSWs’ and the ASYE supervisors’ direct social work practice.

The findings of this study cannot confirm our hypothesis that the application of these psychosocial ideas produced containment for NQSWs, and data from NQSWs’ experiences of supervision would be required to evidence this. We would argue, however, that the feedback from the ASYE supervisors did indicate that emotive issues were being addressed more frequently in supervision, that the ASYE supervisors thought this was beneficial for their NQSWs and that the psychosocial model facilitated this. This therefore indicated a process occurring in supervision whereby the application of psychosocial ideas facilitated the exploration of emotive material that could be experienced as containing by the NQSWs. Further research is needed to explore this hypothesis.

The challenges and limitations of the training highlighted by the ASYE supervisors were that delivering supervision in this manner could raise anxiety for supervisors, and that applying the model was stifled by their busy organisational contexts, two themes united by the idea of organisational responses to anxiety and containment. Hoggett (2010) argues that this busyness in social work teams highlighted by the ASYE supervisors has defensive qualities, noting ‘such front-line teams often… (have) a manic edge of busyness… but it is precisely this busyness which also protects workers from thinking about what they are doing’ (p. 203). A point echoed by Ruch (2007) who stresses this urge ‘do’ at the expense of the ability to ‘be’, defends practitioners from being emotionally engaged with the realities of complex and distressing child protection work. Such strategies of avoidance are further evidenced in Smith’s (2022) study which noted how social workers employed a variety of defence mechanisms in supervision to prevent emotional engagement with the challenging material they were discussing. This collective avoidance of the emotional nature of the social work task also appears to tally with the anxiety the ASYE supervisors shared that applying the psychosocial ideas would require them to contain emotion that might be brought to the surface, emotions that were perhaps previously denied by their organisations. This avoidance of the emotions implicit in social work practice is indicative of an organisational social defence against the anxiety as proposed by Menzies Lyth (1959), whereby individuals collectively and unconsciously behave in ways that defend them against the anxiety associated with their work. Such organisational defences that deny the emotionality of the social work task fail to acknowledge the subjectivity of social workers’ experience, and result in an uncontained environment for NQSWs, which could explain the levels of stress and anxiety faced by NQSWs highlighted in the literature above.

Toasland (2007) notes that the impact of such an organisational defence will also impact on supervisors, arguing that in order to effectively contain their staff, supervisors require their own containment. Toasland (2007) argues that social work management involves not only the containment of the complex emotions experienced and projected by their staff, but also the complexity of managing agency anxieties in relation to case allocation and compliance with increasingly complex and performative bureaucratic systems. Therefore, an organisational failure of containment results in a failure to ‘contain the containers’ (the ASYE supervisors), subsequently impacting upon the supervisors’ ability to contain their staff, which could account for NQSWs’ poor experiences of supervision evident in the literature. Moreover, such a defence denies NQSW supervisors the training and support they require, as, if emotion is denied, presumably support to manage this is not required, a formulation that would account for the poor levels of training and support experienced by NQSW supervisors outlined in both the data from this study and the wider literature.

Interestingly, the community of practice model applied in the training appeared to mitigate against this organisational defence, as it essentially modelled the supervisee–supervisor relationship, and how social workers use supervision, providing containment for the ASYE supervisors. Through this process the ASYE supervisors attending the training supported one another to make sense of their emotional experience applying the ideas with their supervisees, therefore providing a form containment to the supervisors which could subsequently support them to contain their staff. These findings that are consistent with Williams et al. (2022) study of reflective practice groups for supervisors, which noted the containment created by the groups’ facilitators. Such findings provide an argument for the application of a community of practice model for social work supervisors, and perhaps social workers more broadly, who work in performative environments where they might not experience containment in the workplace. Here, the community of practice model provides a form or containment external to the agency.

Conclusions

The findings of this small-scale evaluation demonstrate how the adoption of a psychosocial frame for social work supervision can support ASYE assessors to bring the self into supervision and explore the psychosocial influences on NQSWs as they form their new professional selves. While the findings of this study indicate that such processes have the potential to create containment and reduce anxiety, benefiting NQSWs wellbeing and potentially improving their subsequent practice, further research exploring NQSWs’ experiences of this supervision model is needed to evidence this. The anxiety that is rife in UK social work and the social defences against this anxiety employed by social work organisations, represent a significant challenge to this model. Such conditions deny the emotionality and subjectivity of social worker experience in favour of a performative working environment, increasing the pressure on NQSWs and denying ASYE supervisors the containment necessary to contain their NQSWs’ anxiety. The findings of this study indicate that the impact of such a failure of organisational containment could be mitigated through a community of practice model, which provides containment to supervisors outside of their defensive organisational contexts.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Gillian Ruch and Jo Williams for their support in editing this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

H. Smith

Henry Smith is a lecturer at the University of Sussex. He has over 15 years experience working in a variety of academic and children and family social work settings.

l. Parish-Mackin

Lara Parish Mackin is an experienced social work practitioner and manager who currently works as a Principal Practice tutor for Frontline.

R. Wise

Ryan Wise is a Practice Tutor at Frontline. He also Director of Crescendo CIC, a social worker led organisation who work with local authorities to introduce practitioner led change system change and innovation.