Putting you in the picture: the use of visual imagery in social work supervision

ABSTRACT

The literature has consistently documented the impact of the work on the health and wellbeing of individual practitioners and the tensions they experience when mediating organisational demands with the needs of service users. Simultaneously, the quality and content of social work supervision has become increasingly vulnerable to both local and global systemic issues impacting on the profession. It is timely to explore effective short-term, self-regulatory methods of support for professionals. As a means of complementing and enriching their supervision experiences and practice. We describe an arts-based intervention in which five groups of social work professionals in England (n = 30) were invited to explore guided imagery as a tool for reflecting on a challenge or dilemma arising in their everyday practice. Evaluation data was captured from the participants’ pre-workshop questionnaire, visual analyses of the images generated and the social worker’s narratives and post-workshop evaluation. We discuss the potential application of using visual imagery as a tool to bridge gaps in supervision practice and as a simple pedagogic tool for promoting contemplative processes of learning. Visual imagery can be used to strengthen social worker’s integration of different demands with their emotional supports and coping strategies.

תקציר

הספרות על עבודה סוציאלית מדברת על החשיבות של הטיפול בדחק של עובדים סוציאליים ועל

הלחץ הרב הכרוך בעבודה הן מהמטופלים והן מהמערכות שהם עובדים בהן

לאור המחסור הגובר במערכות תמיכה כגון שעות הדרכה של עובדים סוציאליים חשוב לייצר דרכים לטיפול- עצמי שהם מספקים מענה לצורך הזה ושמתמקדים בוודות עצמי ובמרחב לחקור את התופעה אני מציעים התערבות באמנות למטרה זאת : המאמר מציג את התיאוריה של שימוש באמנות להדרכה וההתערבות הוערכה לפני ואחרי ההתערבות.

השלכות של שימוש באמנות בהדרכה בעבודה סוציאלית נידונים

KEYWORDS:

• Social work supervision
• visual imagery
• arts-based research
• social work support
• coping strategies

מילות מפתח:

• הדרכה בעבודה סוציאלי דימויים בעבודה סוציאלית תמיכה והתמודדות של עובדים סוציאליים ומחקר מבוסס אמנות

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Trish Hafford-Letchfield is Professor of Social Care at Middlesex University London, UK, and is a qualified nurse, social worker, educator and manager. Her research interests are in equality and diversity issues and particularly in promoting the engagement of older people from marginalised groups in social care. She has especially promoted co-production in her research including arts-based methods and much of her research aims to have a direct impact on professional practice.

Ephrat Huss is a supervising level art therapist and social worker in the Social Work Department in the Ben Gurion University in Israel. In her research and teaching, she makes connections between arts and health, therapy, community work, social practitioners, self-care, supervision, social change, advocacy, and inter-cultural communication and conflict negotiation. She researches arts in social practice and also social theories within art therapy practice. Her methods are arts based and she has published over 40 articles and 3 books on art therapy and arts-based research, social work and art therapy research and practice. These include participatory and indigenous research, arts as empowerment and as a salutogenic strengths-based focus, the role of social theories in art therapy and the role of phenomenological methods in social work. She has founded a youth group for Bedouin and Jewish children using the arts together in her area, the south of Israel.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by British Academy [grant number International Mobility Award].