Group Mentoring - An Alternative for Supervision?
Supervision of social workers in the Australian social work context is enshrined in our professional codes of practice. Supervision is generally assumed to mean a one to one process and is usually aligned with line management. Questions have been asked how relevant and realistic this is in the current context of practice. The need to look at other paradigms is a call often heard.
In Adelaide, South Australia this call has been responded to and an alternative model of social workers exploring practice issues to bring about better practice has been trialed via a mentoring model. It has been a very developmental model and considerable learning has occurred along the way. It has offered the opportunity to examine an alternate process to traditional supervision and explore where this fits within the current context in which we work.
In this workshop we plan to present the process we have gone through, the lessons learned and where we are currently and provide an opportunity to open a discussion about the current supervision paradigms and where the process of mentoring fits into this particularly in the Continuing Professional Education context.