Supervision in Education

Supervision is a regular, confidential, professional conversation which holds children and young people at its heart. Common in social work and mental health, supervision is increasingly recognised in education as vital professional support. Talking Heads provides senior leaders with dedicated time to think, reflect and lead with clarity. Regular sessions support confident decision making, reduce emotional overload and strengthen resilience.

Relationship is at the heart of good supervision. Challenge cannot occur without safe relationships. Supervision can be transformational.

Schools and other education settings are often at the heart of work with children and families who may need additional help. As well as contributing to multi agency safeguarding systems, there are increasing demands being placed on education settings to be the first port of call in working with a variety of complex issues including supporting vulnerable families and addressing the mental health needs of pupils. This can be challenging for staff who may feel emotionally drained, lacking in confidence and overwhelmed by the expectations placed upon them.

Supervision can make a real difference to the wellbeing of staff, pupils, and families through providing a space where staff can explore feelings, thoughts and responses and develop confidence and skills in working with a range of complex situations.

We believe that senior leaders in education benefit in many ways from safe, creative, challenging, regular, resourcing, trauma – informed supervision but at the heart of all of it and our reason for existing is to make the lives of children and young people better. All of them. The impact is on the whole system.

In a culture about outcomes and solutions it is powerful to offer a place to process and reflect with no temptation to shortcut the listening needed to truly understand what is being brought.

All of us at Talking Heads believe that to really benefit the children and young people in education settings, as many people as possible should be in supervision.  This should always begin with the senior leaders being in external supervision.  We have supported a number of settings we work with in developing supervision across their teams.  Due to the number of Associate Supervisors in our team, it is easy to maintain separation by ensuring that every senior leader works with a different supervisor to retain a gap. This is important to us and all those we work with.

Where we are working to support a number of people in a setting, Lisa offers regular (usually half termly for 30 minutes) review meetings with the person who holds the oversight of how supervision is working for the setting. Themes that have arisen across supervision can be raised and discussed (whilst maintaining confidentiality unless it is a safeguarding issue) along with the development of supervision within the setting.  These review meetings are offered in addition to supervision and agreed in advance.  It means that trust develops between us and the setting and, in the past, has meant that when a serious safeguarding issue has arisen in a school, instead of the school feeling ashamed and pulling away from supervision they felt safe enough to increase supervision and trust that we are there to ultimately help them safeguard. With an understanding that, if mistakes have been made, then the only way forward is to be supported through facing up to what is needed to keep the children and young people safe. The ultimate purpose of supervision.

Where we are working with more than one person in a setting, we will also bring our team together if there is a complex issue that needs systemic discussion in the best interests of the setting, we will let the setting know that this needs to happen.  Lisa will attend these meetings along with the Associate Supervisors who work in that setting.  Examples of when this might happen are if there is a complex safeguarding or investigation procedure. Individual supervisee confidentiality is maintained in these sessions unless there is a safeguarding issue.

We acknowledge that it will not be possible for education settings to fund external supervision for all of the team so we are delighted to be able to bring training to the education settings we are working with, where there is a readiness to expand supervision to other team members and to embed it in the culture of the school where conversations questions and collegiate challenge hold children and young people’s needs at their heart.  In recognition that supervision is a relatively new concept in education and may need explanation, we expect that anyone attending our courses has already received supervision themselves for at least a year before attending.