Supervision and Management in Social Work: A Book Review

Overview of Supervision in Social Work

The team of Alfred Kadushin and Daniel Harkness has published a book titled Supervision in Social Work, which presents a number of key ideas and strategies about the leadership needed by supervisors and managers in social work. This paper reviews and critiques that book alongside an excellent companion text by Donna Hardina, An Empowering Approach to Managing Social Service Organizations.

Supervision in Social Work by Kadushin and Harkness embraces a wide variety of subjects germane to social work and to the leadership and supervision required to provide the best possible services to clients, as well as the best possible working conditions in the office. It begins with a historical overview of the field of social work and a review of how supervision plays an important role in the delivery of services to clients. The book offers sections on the recruitment and selection of employees, the importance of delegating authority and assignments, and the vitally important skill of effective communication. The authors take great pains to review the need for good communication between staff members — from management to social worker, from social worker to client — including lateral communication and informal and formal communication. Moreover, Kadushin and Harkness point to specific problems that can occur in organizational communication.

The supervisor is not simply in his or her position to keep everyone on task, generate reports, and maintain bureaucratic functions. According to Kadushin and Harkness, the supervisor in a social work environment is an "advocate" for his or her staff; the supervisor is also a buffer between staff and administration, and should be a "change agent" and a liaison to the community.

Other key points in this book include the whole issue of authority and power — including reward power, coercive power, positional (legitimate) power, referent power, and expert power — and the interrelations between various forms of supervisory power, along with how to make authority legitimate within the structure of an organization. Supervision comes in many forms, and after reading this book the alert student will sense that there are myriad phases involved in attaining the authority that comes with supervision, as well as pitfalls and traps that a supervisor can fall into. While burnout is a very real dynamic that can drain the enthusiasm and professional energy from a social worker, the stress that leads to burnout can — and should — be avoided, or at the very least managed on a professional level.

The transition from social worker to supervisor is not always a smooth process, but this book addresses that issue in great detail and offers helpful guidance. Race and ethnicity must also be taken into account within a social work organization. As in any organization, communication and other functional problems can arise when there is a mismatch in cultural sensitivity — for example, when a Caucasian supervisor works with an African American worker, or vice versa — and when insensitivity leads to conflict. In addition, the book goes into substantial detail regarding performance evaluations: how they should be conducted, what works and what does not, and which procedures are the most practical and effective.

Connecting Key Concepts to Social Work Practice

When reviewing the quality of services social workers provide today — juxtaposed with how supervisors handled social work cases in the 19th century — one can see that the field has come a long way toward delivering competent, empathetic services. Though there are flaws and room for criticism in today's social work environment, all social workers should understand how things used to be, contrasted with the policies we adhere to now. What went on years ago remains relevant to contemporary practice. The social workers of the 19th century were known as "visitors"; in one case, a visitor had visited a family and reported to her supervisor, "…those children must be taken away; the home was too dreadful" (Kadushin et al., 2002, p. 4).

The supervisor then asked the "visitor" to work out a way to "make the home fit for them to stay in." Rather than authorizing the removal of those children, the goal of the supervisor was to work with the "visitor" in ways that employ tact, personal power, and professionalism to improve the family situation. That same professionalism must be employed today. The hierarchical position of the supervisor that was customary in the 1800s remains in place today, with a couple of minor modifications. The early supervisor did not have ultimate authority to make decisions on individual cases; in fact, that supervisor had to report to a "district committee" which held ultimate authority.

The supervisor was essentially in middle management then, and the same is true today. The supervisor works with social workers in the field but ultimately answers to agency administrators (Kadushin, p. 6). Today's worker has been trained to accept defined responsibilities, and those duties are linked to a hierarchy — no one acts entirely alone in making decisions about providing assistance to clients. Office administrators, in turn, are beholden to guidelines handed down from county and state authorities and elected officials.

The authors make some very important observations about the relationship between the social worker, the supervisor, and the office bureaucracy. In England, "community workers" (social workers) operating in the community feel that "…their primary loyalty and commitment" is to the community in which they work, "and to the people in that community" (Kadushin, p. 16). The people in the community know the worker and trust the worker, and the community worker is thus "hesitant about being identified with an agency and its bureaucracy, which often represents what the community is struggling against" (Kadushin, p. 16). This creates a ready-made dynamic in which the social worker perceives herself as the agent of social change while the supervisor and administrator back in the office are seen as obstacles to that change. The "suits" are assumed to be worried about budgets and not fully understanding the emotional distress and socioeconomic hardships that low-income people endure — or so the social worker believes, given her relative isolation from the fiduciary and governmental aspects of social work.

Moreover, Kadushin explains that the social worker can begin to suspect that the real "purpose of supervision is to exact conformity with the goals and norms of the agency," rather than to improve lives in the community. The temptation to develop a "them vs. us" attitude toward supervisors must be resisted, the authors explain. Supervisors can eliminate or reduce the chances of this schism developing by showing genuine interest in the daily activities of the social worker and by going out into the field to observe firsthand the dynamics the social worker is dealing with.

This additional responsibility of the supervisor is described as "…the expressive-supportive leadership function of supervision" (Kadushin, p. 20). In other words, in addition to administrative and educational leadership roles, the supervisor bears the responsibility of "sustaining worker morale" and of helping address "job-related discouragement and discontent" (Kadushin, p. 20). A worker in the field may be dealing with people in deep distress — people facing foreclosure from their apartment or the loss of food stamps and healthcare. It is the duty of the supervisor to give supervisees "a sense of worth as professionals," along with "a sense of belonging in the agency" and a "sense of security in their performance" (Kadushin, p. 20).

Overview of An Empowering Approach to Managing Social Service Organizations

Supervision is a means to an end, Kadushin explains (p. 22), because it is an ongoing process that begins in the classroom and continues with the goal of producing positive client outcomes. Part of the supervisor's job is to educate social workers, help social workers "internalize the service aspirations of social work practice," and sustain "the worker-as-person in the face of difficult challenges" (Kadushin, pp. 22–23).

Following the reading of this book, it becomes clear that when social workers perform "non-uniform tasks" in "uncertain and unpredictable contexts" — toward objectives that are perhaps "ambiguous" — that leads directly to more "decentralization of decision making" and hence a greater need for "autonomy" (Kadushin, p. 36). This is not intended to promote the idea that social workers should operate independently, following only their own values and goals. Rather, it is an acknowledgment that structure is necessary, and when there is uncertainty about how to proceed and when an intervention risks possible failure, the social worker needs to know that the supervisor has provided direction. The book is clear that the "desirability" of a supervisor lies not just in leadership, but also in the full application of that supervisor's knowledge and experience.

Author Donna Hardina — a professor of social work education — offers a number of empowering strategies and examples in her book An Empowering Approach to Managing Social Service Organizations. For example, she devotes a chapter to promoting the psychological empowerment of workers, arguing that a social worker's duties do not have to lead to "dull, routine, and mechanical" outcomes for the worker (Hardina, 2007). Monotonous work and low motivation produce very poor-quality efforts, so it is the supervisor's job to keep workers engaged and enthusiastic.

Hardina relates empowerment to self-efficacy in the sense that the social worker is trained to empower clients and assist them in discovering their "inner power," and to help clients increase their sense of self-efficacy by connecting them to the "true causes of their condition" (Hardina). However, notwithstanding the empowerment tactics used with clients, "…little attention has been paid to the needs of social workers that may feel powerless working in traditional, highly centralized, top-down organizational settings…" (Hardina). In addition, Hardina argues that low morale, low motivation, and "minimal levels of job performance" can result when the social worker is not made to feel valued by the supervisor, and when the social worker has very little input into organizational decision-making.

Hardina also uses her accessible narrative to help social service organizations approach team building as an alternative to a model in which decisions are made by a "small number of managers" and power rests in the hands of a few with little or no collaboration with staff. She offers specifics on the skills and strategies that managers need for team building — including five specific stages to be used in the process — and any future manager or leader can clearly see the utility of taking these steps.

Advocacy is a necessary tool not just for the client but also for the social worker, Hardina explains. Championing the rights of individuals through direct intervention and empowerment is the job of the social worker, but the manager must also use creative and proven advocacy strategies to address the potentially challenging issues the social worker confronts.

Conclusion

Kadushin, Alfred, and Harkness, Daniel. (2002). Supervision in Social Work. New York: Columbia University Press.