Evaluating Professional Supervision in Aotearoa/New Zealand: A multidisciplinary collaborative study

Clinical psychology - An Evaluation of Professional Supervision in Aotearoa/New Zealand Saturday - 29th Aug 2015 15:40 - MSB1.02 Beverley Burns Registered Psychologist, Private Practice Janet May Senior Lecturer Centre for Health and Social Practice Waikato Institute of Technology Allyson Davys Registered Social Worker , Private Practice Michael O'Connell Clinical Nurse Director Mental Health and Addiction Services, Lakes District Health Board The growth of professional supervision within health and social services in Aotearoa/New Zealand has been well documented (Maidment & Beddoe, 2012) and at the same time the importance of evaluating professional supervision has been promoted as best practice. How this evaluation is translated into practice remains unclear and there have been repeated calls for further research into the place, role and process of evaluation in supervision (O’Donoghue, 2006). Yet more recently Watkins and Milne (2014) have commented that the evaluation of supervision has advanced from “nuisance to necessity” and suggest that it is occurring “within supervision, across individuals and within systems” (page 690). A three stage research project was designed to explore and document current practices in evaluating supervision across four professions, psychology, social work, counselling and nursing, in Aotearoa/New Zealand. In contrast to Watkins and Milne the preliminary findings suggest that the evaluation of supervision is ill defined and occurs in an adhoc manner. This paper will present the findings of the first stage of this interprofessional study. The preliminary results of twenty four semi- structured interviews conducted with supervisors, supervisees and managers indicate a range of practice from formal evaluation to no evaluation at all. A number of participants expressed an interest in evaluation of supervision but were uncertain as to how this could be achieved in practice. beverley@beverleyburns.co.nz 3