The application of a cognitive and affective interviewing model in social work supervision

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This project starts from a concern with the quality of social work thinking and assessment. Inquiry reports following high profile child death cases have repeatedly highlighted shortcomings in social workers' analytical and assessment skills and exercise of professional judgement. Recognition of these limitations highlights the need to explore what might help practitioners to 'think about their thinking'. Practitioners frequently encounter complex, emotionally charged and sometimes dangerous situations and these encounters provide the 'evidential base' on which decisions are made; so the nature and quality of information that practitioners draw from them is of vital importance. A number of writers have drawn attention to the connection between the nature and quality of thinking and the emotional content and context of childcare practice. Supervision provides a key forum in which thinking processes and practices can be explored, so has a critical role to play here in providing a safe space where practitioners can identify the emotional content of their experience and reflect on its meaning. Given the centrality of the supervision-practice feedback loop for sound practice it is important that staff providing supervision have the competence to do this to the highest standards. To support their work, they need accessible and reliable methods and resource materials that can be readily used in practice. The proposed project involves collaboration with one local authority to develop and trial a new approach, based on Cognitive Interviewing (CI), for use in supervision. CI is an approach that has been developed to promote the accuracy and completeness of eyewitness accounts of events. Initially devised for use with witnesses or victims of crime, it draws on psychological understandings of memory and recall, and uses a particular set of questioning techniques to improve retrieval of information from the memory of a witness or victim. It has been chosen as a starting point here as it offers a tested approach to support the collection of information. Working closely with social work practitioners in the partner organisation, the project team will adapt the CI framework for use in supervision, developing an approach - the Cognitive and Affective Supervisory Approach (CASA) - that homes in on cognitive understandings of practice but in so doing also heightens practitioners' awareness of the affective dimensions of practice and of their thinking. Dr Turney, the principal investigator (PI) and Professor Ruch, the co-investigator (Co-I), have extensive experience in both practice and research in relation to critical and analytical thinking in assessment and the role of emotion in practice, and of developing resource materials for practice. The partner organisation, a local authority in the South West of England, will work with the principal and co-investigator, providing staff time for the collaborative development of the CASA protocol and, after appropriate training, for its use in an agreed number of supervision sessions over an 8-month period. During this implementation phase, the PI and Co-I will provide monthly group consultation sessions for the supervisors, to allow them to reflect on the use of the CASA and the extent to which it assists the expression of both 'event' and 'emotion' information, and how this information has been used in supervision to inform case management.Data gathered through the course of the project will be reviewed to assess the usefulness and impact in/for practice of the CASA framework. Drawing on participants' feedback during and at the end of the implementation phase, the project team will revise the CASA materials as necessary. A range of outputs including an executive summary of project findings, model guidance and protocols, workshop template and curriculum guide will be developed collaboratively by the project team for use by academic and practice audiences and disseminated.