Family violence, sexual assault and child wellbeing best practice supervision

Overview

Supervision is central to developing and sustaining family violence, sexual assault and child wellbeing workforces.

It allows the exploration of:

• roles and responsibilities of sector practitioners, including risk assessment, therapeutic support, engagement, safety planning and collaborative multi-agency responses to family violence
• roles and responsibilities of supervisors
• adult, child and young person victim survivors’ experience and narrative and how to work in a nuanced way with young people who can be both victim survivors and use family violence
• respecting victim survivors as experts of their own lives and valuing their assessments of their own safety and needs
• how to practise safe, non-collusive communication with perpetrators
• inviting personal accountability for perpetrators’ use of family violence and sexual violence, and their related failure to protect children by using violence
• both perceived and real risks to supervisee’s safety, including fears practitioners have working directly with perpetrators or providing afterhours outreach services¹
• applying an intersectional lens and understanding supervisee/supervisor biases, including how people from First Nations, LGBTIQA+, culturally diverse communities or at-risk age groups may experience barriers, discrimination and inequality
• providing practitioners with lived experience of family violence and sexual assault with practice support and encouragement to practise self-care
• providing First Nations practitioners with support to carry the cultural load
• how to embed cultural safety, in line with the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural safety framework²
• providing First Nations practitioners with support to carry the cultural load
• how a supervisee's family of origin³ or creation may affect their client assessments and interactions
• how to be more strengths-based and collaborative with clients, colleagues and other professionals
• individual practitioner and organisational power, and structural and systemic privilege and oppressions across the sector⁴
• the multi-faceted nature of supervision, including reflection, case discussions, support, professional development, clinical and managerial functions.

The sector has a highly skilled, dedicated, and resilient workforce, who, for decades, have embraced the importance of supervision and reflective practice (active process of witnessing an experience, examining it, and learning from it). The prevalence and severity of family violence have escalated. This, combined with the prescribed responsibilities under the Family Violence Multi Agency Risk Assessment and Management (MARAM) Framework, including a greater focus on collaborative practice and intersectionality, means providing effective supervision has never been more crucial.

Written in collaboration with the sector, the following information can be used ahead of the full Best-practice supervision guidelines (the guidelines), to be published online in 2023. The guidelines are a commitment of the 10-year industry plan and the First rolling action plan.

The information does not set out to change what is already working within the sector, but will:

• provide an opportunity for programs and organisations to review their supervision policies and practices and consider sector thinking and what other programs have found useful
• apply to family violence, sexual assault and child wellbeing sectors, acknowledging that these workforces have different skill sets and role requirements
• set the foundation for achieving more uniform, standard definitions, models, principles and practices of supervision across the state
• explore complex concepts and theories in terms of how they relate to supervision and provide further reading if the sector wants to delve deeper
• contribute to the commitment Government made in the Dhelk Dja Partnership Agreement of ensuring self-determined, strengths-based, trauma-informed, and culturally safe practices are built into policies and practice, and the broader family violence service system and its workforce
• signal to potential graduates and career changers entering the family violence and sexual assault workforces that their learning, support and wellbeing needs will be taken seriously
• support a culture of learning and professional growth
• invigorate conversations about best practice and some of the tensions and challenges inherent in providing regular and effective supervision.

There is information on:

• supervision definitions
• supervision functions
• reflective supervision.

These topics were chosen based on discussions with the sector and the fact that they form foundational pieces, from which more complex concepts can be explored.

The information is intended to be used during individual, group or peer supervision sessions, policy development and supervision training.

'Paying attention to improving supervision quality can have far-reaching effects and be one of the most cost-effective ways of turning around an organisation.' —Wonnacott, 2012⁵

Footnotes

1 Family Safety Victoria, Family violence multi-agency risk assessment and management framework, Victorian Government website, 2018, accessed 27 Feb 2023.

2 Department of Health and Human Services, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultural safety framework, Department of Families, Fairness and Housing website, 2019, accessed 24 Feb 2023.

3 B Lackie, ‘The families of origin of social workers’, Clinical Social Work Journal, 1983, 11 (4): 309-322, DOI:10.1007/BF00755898.

4 Family Safety Victoria, Family violence multi-agency risk assessment and management framework.

5 J Wonnacott, Mastering Social Work Supervision. Jessica Kingsley Publishers, London, UK 2012.