YESTERDAY, TODAY AND TOMORROW: IS SOCIAL WORK SUPERVISION IN SOUTH AFRICA KEEPING UP?
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15270/46-3-162Abstract
The recruitment and retention strategy of the Department of Social Development (2006:23)postulates that there is a “lack of structured supervision and poor quality supervisors, who
themselves also lack capacity to conduct professional supervision” in South Africa. Pieterse
(1961), one of the first authors on supervision in South Africa, made similar claims close to
five decades ago. These two comments give rise to the question: has social work in South
Africa been practising supervision over the past five decades beyond historical bureaucratic
discourses, and has it engaged with changing global, local and personal contexts to develop and
sustain critically responsive practices? In other words: is social work supervision in South
Africa keeping up with the times? By addressing this question, this paper seeks to respond to
the call of the recruitment and retention strategy document (Department of Social
Development, 2006) to evaluate current supervision practices. In this attempt the paper reports
on research, drawing on an historical analysis of the international and local development of
social work supervision and on a case study of current supervision practices in an NGO
environment, in order to recommend a context-specific conceptual framework for future
supervision practices. This paper thus aims to examine the interplay between the historical
development, current practices and future challenges of social work supervision
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