Supervision for children’s wellbeing

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Child-aware supervision is an approach that supervisors of frontline workers can take to promote child and family-sensitive practices in their work with clients who have families. It incorporates attitudes, strategies and techniques that support workers (and organisations) to identify and respond to the needs of children. It continually aims to build practitioner capacity and is grounded in reflective practice, based on knowledge and experience, and supported by the authorising environment of the service organisation. Four aspects of child-aware supervision are explored in this course including:

• Accountability to children’s safety and wellbeing by providing a safe space for practice reflection
• Development to improve children’s and families lives, but also for practitioners to derive satisfaction from their work and progress their careers
• Connection with personal ethics and organisational values to guide child-aware practice
• Continuous learning a commitment to increasing practitioners’ confidence in child-aware practice, again with the aim of improving children’s and families lives.

Providing support for practitioners to engage in reflective practice is an integral component to any supervisor–supervisee relationship. Eight skills will also be showcased throughout this course as part of a reflective supervision framework.

This course is suitable for anyone supervising practitioners who engage children, adults or families in case management, case work or therapy. This includes a broad range of practitioners such as paediatricians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, family and relationship counsellors, child mental health practitioners and specialist counsellors. It also includes general practitioners, allied health professionals and child protection workers.

This course recognises that these specialist supervisors:

• work with practitioners in a variety of settings
• commonly have extensive experience in implementing a range of interventions when working with practitioners; and
• have diverse theoretical perspectives and practice approaches that inform their work.

This course was developed collaboratively with practitioners from The Bouverie Centre, who helped develop the supervision demonstrations and content. The Bouverie Centre is an integrated practice-research organisation that draws on its history of bringing family therapy to Australia to promote healthy relationships in families, organisations and communities.

It is estimated that this course will take you approximately two hours to complete, including reading material and watching videos.

You can undertake the course across multiple sessions at your own pace. The last screen you visit before logging off will be bookmarked and you will have the option of returning to that screen when you next log in.