INTERACTIONAL SUPERVISION SHIFTING THE GUIDING PARADIGM

Social work and social work supervision originally borrowed its paradigm from medicine using a linear three-step process of study-diagnosis-treatment. The Interactional model of social work practice and supervision represents a paradigm shift that focuses on the moment-to-moment interaction between social worker and client, and the parallel process between supervisor and worker, with each affecting and being affected by the other. This chapter will describe and illustrate, with process recordings, this dynamic process. It also challenges a number of false dichotomies that negatively affect practice and supervision such as process versus content, support versus confrontation, the individual versus the group, and personal versus professional. Supervision and practice is examined against the backdrop of the four phases of work – the preliminary, beginning, middle, and ending/transitions phases.