Effective supervision in a variety of settings

People who use services and supervision: Impact, outcomes and involvement

Summary

• Improving outcomes for people who use services is the ultimate goal of good supervision, but people who use services are rarely asked for their input.
• People who use services are keen to find ways of providing feedback about their experiences, as they would like to avoid difficult situations leading to formal complaints. They would also like the opportunity to highlight good practice.
• Emerging examples of ways in which people who use services can contribute to supervision are:
  • Inviting feedback to managers and supervisors with the use of postcards or questionnaires.
  • Arranging group meetings with people who use services and staff to address issues raised in supervision in a non-threatening environment – and to discuss ways of resolving them together.
  • Providing feedback forms to people who use services and arranging a follow-up phone call. Information from this can then be used in monthly staff supervision and annual appraisals.
• Using the care plan as a way of asking for and reviewing any cause for concern or praise.
• Training people who use services as supervisors for staff in training or those newly-qualified.
• Input by people who use services into supervision needs to be both feasible and realistic, given practical and time constraints. Health and social care workers need to retain the space to be honest about their work and their feelings in a trusting supervisory relationship.
• Organisations led by people who use services could play a key role in facilitating user involvement or input into supervision, enabling it to happen in a safe and supportive way for people who use services and the staff involved.

Background

Improving outcomes for people who use services and carers is a key goal of supervision, but they are rarely involved directly in the process. Much of the discussion that takes place in supervision will focus on a practitioner’s direct work with people who use services. This means that people who use services are already indirectly involved in supervision. However, emerging practice suggests that people who use services have much to contribute directly to the supervision of health and social care workers.

People who use services are often involved in, or consulted about, services, policy and service delivery. Moreover, professional standards require social work education providers to involve people who use services and carers in the training and education of social workers. However, while person-centred care and personalisation demand that the individual is placed at the centre of their care, it is rare for them to be involved or consulted within the context of supervision.

The Social Care Institute for Excellence (SCIE) practice enquiry [2] into supervision found little evidence of service user involvement, but some interest in exploring it. Consequently, SCIE set up a small seminar in order to hear from a wider range of people who use services and carers. The seminar found considerable support for the involvement of people who use services in supervision in principle, but few examples in practice. In particular, some people who use services saw it as a way of helping to resolve difficult situations and avoiding the need for making a formal complaint.

Many people who use services fear giving negative feedback, and they are often worried that their concerns are not fully understood. Involvement in supervision might give people a way of letting managers know when a relationship with a member of staff is not working well, without having to either continue to put up with the situation or pursue a complaints procedure.