Abstract: Submission #26

Abstract Social work supervision is a support, mentoring and professional development platform for social workers. It also must develop their knowledge, skills, abilities and disposition to deliver effective services. The main problem in the practice of social work supervision is that it focuses primarily on social workers delivering on their caseloads with little attention paid to their professional and emotional needs. More challenges include: Lack of theoretical framework in its practice; lack of resources; lack of training and lack of policies. The aim of this study was to explore the state of social work supervision in the South African welfare sector. The study applied a mixed-methods research approach and a convergent parallel design. Non-probability and the accidental sampling and also random sampling for the quantitative approach. Participants for both the qualitative and quantitative study comprised social workers and supervisors from DSD and the NGOs in four provinces. The main findings of the study suggest that social work supervision is lacking in areas such as support for both social workers and supervisors; lack of training for new supervisors. One of the recommendations was that social work supervision must become part of the modules taught in Universities.
Keywords: Supervision; Support; Training.