A Practical Guide to Transformative Supervision for the Helping Professions

Supervision is a valuable protected space for personal and professional development that has the potential to contribute greatly to positive transformative change. This book explores what is meant by transformative supervision and how it can be undertaken. It examines the key factors that contribute to the transformative function, such as the role of observation and questioning, the importance of working with emotions, and exploring intuition. This book takes an in-depth look at the supervisory relationship and offers real examples from practice to illustrate the ideas in action. Offering a range of practical strategies, techniques, and approaches to enhance current supervision practice, this book brings a new voice to the topic of supervision by emphasising how it can contribute to continuous learning and self-development. Suitable for all those in the helping professions including social workers, counsellors, psychotherapists, occupational therapists, nurses and probation officers, this practical book is an invaluable guide to enhancing supervision and promoting both individual and social change.

Nicki Weld is Social Work Professional Leader (general health) for the Wellington district health board in New Zealand. She is also Director of CNZN Ltd, New Zealand, which provides training, facilitation, supervision, consultancy and solutions for child protection and social service management and workers. She has worked for a number of years in a variety of social service and child protection roles, including senior social worker, supervisor, senior trainer, and as a national social work advisor. She is author of Making Sure Children get 'HELD': Ideas and Resources to Help Workers to Place Hope, Empathy, Love and Dignity at the Heart of Child Protection and Support and co-author of Walking in People's Worlds: A Practical and Philosophical Guide to Social Work. She is the co-creator of the Three Houses information gathering tool.