Critical Supervision for the Human Services

Download or read book Critical Supervision for the Human Services written by Lou Johnston and published by Jessica Kingsley Publishers. This book was released on 2016-04-21 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Practitioners in the helping professions today operate in challenging settings where budgets have been cut dramatically, and progression and success are too often defined primarily by key performance indicators and strategic outcomes. Tensions arise when such pressures conflict with helping professionals' core responsibilities to provide excellent care, advocate for patients or service users and to seek social justice. This book introduces a critical model for supervision which addresses not only the human relationships and interactions involved in work, but also the financial, political and managerial environment in which the work is carried out. It identifies how reflective practice alone is not enough to bring about transformational change, and outlines how practitioners can learn in and through supervision, drawing on ideas from critical pedagogy and organisational learning. Practice examples are included to demonstrate the use of this approach within contemporary human service environments. Providing a new approach for effective supervision, this book will be of interest to practitioners, managers, researchers, academics and students working across the human services, including health care, social services and criminal justice.