Proctor Group Supervision

A Guide to Creative Practice
2. Auflage 2010
ISBN: 978-0-85702-700-9
Verlag: SAGE Publications
Format: EPUB
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 248 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm

Reihe: Counselling Supervision series

Among the plethora of supervision books, Group Supervision is the only one dedicated to working in groups. The strength of group supervision is that it can provide a supportive environment in which practitioners freely share and learn from their own and others' experience.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Proctor, Brigid

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziale Arbeit/Sozialpädagogik Soziale Dienste, Soziale Organisationen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

PART I THE GROUP SUPERVISION ALLIANCE MODEL
Setting the Scene
The Group Option
A Typology for Supervision Groups
PART II MANAGING SUPERVISION GROUPS
Agreements as Friends
Skilful Group Allies - Supervisor and Members
Strategic Priorities
Hot Issues of Group Life
Sharing Responsibility - Peer Groups
PART III SUPERVISING IN GROUPS
The Harvest
Inviting Creativity
PART IV DEVELOPMENT
Groups for Developing Supervision
Training, Research and Accountability

Leseproben

Introduction Developing a model
This book is intended as a practical guide for counsellors and psychotherapists who are interested in group supervision. It arises from experience in a particular context – the developing counselling and psychotherapy profession in the United Kingdom. It is time-specific. My experience spans the final 25 years of the twentieth century and the opening decade of the present century. Like most of my contemporaries, I learned how to supervise in a group through trial and error. I had had some minimum training in social work supervision many years earlier. When working on the Diploma in Counselling Skills Course at South West London College, I invented my way of offering one-to-one supervision to trainees who were learning to import counselling skills into their related helping professions. When economics made two years of individual supervision for each student impracticable, we decided, as a staff, to offer group supervision for the first year, followed by a year of one-to-one. Contrary to more usual thinking, we argued that if supervisees learned to use the group well, experience in that challenging environment would help them use their individual supervision economically, creatively and effectively. The results seemed to justify that assumption. As my experience of supervision and of working groups widened, I became a trainer of supervisors. I found it difficult to communicate why I worked as I did and how I made judgements about good and bad practice. I and some trainer colleagues (notably Gaie Houston, Robin Shohet, Ken Gray) therefore wrestled into shape a framework for understanding the tasks of supervision in general. Subsequently, in writing Open Learning materials with Francesca Inskipp, she and I developed those frameworks further. Although we did not then name our thinking as ‘a model’, we now call it the ‘Supervision Alliance Model’ because it focuses on the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of making good supervision alliances at each stage of the process. We then found that we had to grapple with writing intelligibly about group supervision. We had borrowed and developed various useful models in our group supervision trainings. We were able to demonstrate interesting and effective group supervision. We could give feedback to practicing participants based on ‘felt sense’. We had some clear frameworks to offer – how to set up ground-rules and working agreements in different contexts, for instance. We could offer a variety of useful maps which charted group development and suggest lots of ideas for using the group as participating co-supervisors. However, there seemed to be significant gaps. On one training, I realized that I had no framework to offer that might help the participants understand why one might use a particular exercise. On another, I realized that I had no framework for thinking about the management of creative exercises and structures. Furthermore, we had not sat down and spelled out – or even identified – the skills of supervisors and supervisees who worked well in groups. Most particularly, we were discovering (the joys of co-working) that we worked very differently from each other. In analysing this, we recognized that, in addition to having different working styles, we habitually worked with counsellors at different developmental stages. At that time, mine were usually experienced and, supposedly, moderately sophisticated at working in groups. Francesca’s were usually trainees or volunteers. This realization was to be the clue to finding an important unifying centrepiece in what was becoming a coherent model of group supervision. When we did begin to spell out the tasks, responsibilities, roles, and skills of a group supervisor, we were daunted. We were also amazed at how we had taken for granted the extensive skill and understanding needed by supervisees in order to engage well in group supervision. The mapping task was so complex that I still wonder whether it would be better left inexplicit. However, the model seemed useful to numbers of group supervision trainees. Though complex, it is composed of a variety of component parts. These can stand alone for use in orientating oneself in one particular dimension. Hopefully, they are also clear and simple enough to act as an atlas, to be riffled through at times of confusion: which map do I need here, and to what scale? Does this group member need help in developing a simple skill? Should I have been thinking in terms of a concealed group preoccupation? What do I know that could help clarify this particular supervision issue at this stage of this session? What is our working agreement here? Do we need to review and update the ground rules? Focus on counsellors and psychotherapists
Although I have supervised groups of practitioners whose work is not counselling, this book concentrates on the supervision of counsellors and psychotherapists. I have found that although many of the underlying ideas and practices transfer readily to other settings, there are certain tasks and ways of thinking that are peculiar to the supervision of counsellors or psychotherapists. When a model devised in the contexts of counselling is imported to other contexts without amendment, it can antagonize or confuse. Frameworks for thinking of tasks, for working agreements, for processes of group formation and participation, are potentially useful. If potential is to be actualized, ideas need to be translated into language and behaviour which is appropriate to the specific working culture and context. (I have written at greater length about this elsewhere).1,2 This is even true within the wider culture of counselling and psychotherapy. Words, models, assumptions are not always readily transferable across sub-cultures. Since I would like the Group Supervision Alliance Model, offered here, to be seen as relevant across a variety of theoretical orientations, that act of communication is enough to concentrate on in one book. Underlying values
Although the subject of the book is group supervision, the processes described have wider application and implication. Counselling trainers may find it useful, as may supervisors of individuals. It incorporates the values I hold about education, co-operative enterprise, and professional service. It points up the relationship of these values to the kind of personal and social development which also acts therapeutically – for individuals, groups and wider systems. These are spelt out towards the end of Chapter 1. Thoughts on preparing the second edition
In the last five years I have been 95 per cent retired – what I call the fourth stage of my retirement. I continue to respond to invitations to do short supervision workshops – mainly on group supervision or creative supervision – and always prefer to work with a colleague (most usually Francesca Inskipp.) I have kept to the fringes of the counselling/psychotherapy establishment. The necessary preoccupations, of establishing professional standing in a stressed and competitive human services scene, have come to the fore. I am glad not to feel any special responsibility for finding solutions when even the questions are unclear. I and my contempories frequently give thanks for having found ourselves ‘in’ on the formative stages of an exciting and creative professional engagement – with our clientele, our colleagues and our organizations and systems. I am concerned that some of that liveliness and preoccupation with self and other exploration and discovery has been bullied into the background by academic, medical and educational priorities in training and practice. We sometimes appeared, perhaps were, self-indulgent, but throughout there was a wish to be accountable for our practice to our clients and to each other through professional networks and organizations. When I looked at the lack of accountability in more established professions, I felt proud of what we were developing. In terms of accountability, I believe group work of all kinds has the edge over one-to-one practice, both in therapy and in supervision. It can be more rounded, lets in more light and air, and is less at the mercy of powerful, unquestioned influence and narrowness of focus. I have the impression (being largely unengaged with present practice, that is all I can reasonably have) that group work of all kinds is probably less used than it was in previous decades. That is sad, since if well conducted it is, at the very least, more economic. If I am right, I believe it is because there is less training in group work. Group working is more complicated as a craft and an art than individual work, and perhaps there is less practical new writing and thinking about it. So this edition comes with the hope that it can go some way to encouraging the use of group supervision. Perhaps if readers are interested or enthused by it, this edition might even encourage the increased use of groups in counselling and therapy. I would never pretend that doing good work in groups is easy – the horror stories of many of our trainees indicates how truly terrible some supervision groups have been. That is why I have concentrated on the ‘what to do’ and the ‘how to do it’ aspects. It was with delight that I, belatedly, came across a little book by Mooli Lahad (2000). I can do no better than quote his preface as if it were my own: ‘My personal suggestion is to use this book gently, keeping in mind the boundaries of others as well as yourself and allowing your own supportive nature, warmth and playfulness...

Über Autor(innen)

Proctor, Brigid
Brigid Proctor is a retired Director of Counselling courses at South West London College, and has subsequently worked freelance as a counsellor, supervisor, trainer and consultant. She is a Fellow of BACP having played an active role in the development of BACP, and co-founding Cascade Training Associates and Cascade Publications.