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blog by Ian Milligan, International Advisor, CELCIS, University of Strathclyde, Scotland

In social services, the type of supervision we have is quite distinctive – it is meant to be personal, supportive, developmental - things that are not usually associated with supervision as a traditional middle management-type role.

In recent years there have been numerous pieces of research and policy documents aimed at improving supervision –  carried out in countries where social work is well established. The fact that there is much research into supervision in countries where it is well-established, tells you that it is a difficult thing to get right and sustain. That is certainly true in my experience in Scotland and across the UK.

The Alliance Interest Group on Supervision in the Social Service Workforce 

So I have been very happy to be part of the Alliance’s global consultation process on the subject. I was one of the co-chairs of the interest group, working along with Jane Calder, Senior Child Protection Advisor, Asia and Pacific, and Sayed Adrian Mawismi, Assistant Development Officer, Department of Social Welfare in Malaysia. The consultation took place online, and over 60 people took part in a number of discussion and planning calls, exploring the main issues before we split into three working groups.  

Naturally, we had lots of viewpoints, even just about how we should describe what we all talking about! We began by agreeing to a definition and some basic meanings about the various ‘models’ of supervision. We realised that we had to be clear about what we meant in what we hope will be a widely used and translated toolkit. While this toolkit isn’t meant to be exhaustive or the final say on supervision, it is intended to bridge best practices and knowledge on supervision and to provide a toolkit of resources to support the development of supervision.Some of our starting points: there are many countries where supportive supervision is little understood and rarely practiced. There are other countries where social work is a relatively new profession and few people with the experience or capacity to undertake supervision. In some places the State has begun to recruit social workers but often not established systematic systems of supervision. We hope our guidance provides advocacy and resources to address this gap. We also wanted to see if we could find or develop any guidance to deal with the COVID-19 situation and the need for online supervision. We also wanted our guidance to address whole workforce, while recognising much of the literature and practice has been developed within the social work profession. We wanted to look at existing resources and we drew from recent resources published in Namibia, Myanmar and Cambodia to name but three. We also recognised the value in recent work of the Inter-Agency group who produced the Supervision and Coaching package developed for those working in emergency situations but with great relevance to those in development contexts also.

Group supervision and peer supervision was a topic which came up more than I expected in the interest discussions. My sub-group felt that peer group supervision might be especially useful in countries where social work is an emerging profession, and where there are few experienced managers who can offer reflective supervision.

Bottom up as well as top down

Making supervision happen across an organisation is both a top-down and a bottom-up matter. The Alliance guidance is focused on government and agencies who are responsible for implementing supervision across departments. Yet I believe that all of us who work in social services have a duty to seek the support of a colleague or colleagues and to be honest about how we are getting on in our work, to find those people who understand the role, who will support us and help us improve.

So I’ll be pleased if what we've developed - Guidance Manual on Strengthening Supervision for the Social Service Workforce - can get more people talking about supervision and doing it. Whatever setting we work in, wherever in the world, social service work is personal, it involves working with oppressed groups and people in trouble and often in distress. It is vital we don’t become hardened to trauma, exclusion and injustice. And we must be accountable – are we doing the work we say we are doing – and how are we doing it? We don’t just want to ‘help’ though, we want to empower – it’s pretty demanding to get all that right! Sitting down with a senior colleague or a peer, or in a group – where the agenda is our practice - can be uncomfortable at times. But if we are open-minded and realise we need this space to do the job better, then sitting down with an experienced and supportive person is a good place to be.

Let’s get it in the diary!

COVID-19 has had a devastating impact on individuals and communities, particularly those that have been historically marginalized. National social service systems in many countries have been stretched to respond. As a result, there is increasing recognition of the important role of social service workers, particularly in the areas of child protection, family strengthening, psychosocial support and mental health. To meet the heightened call for a range of services, many governments and non-governmental organizations have increased funding to hire and train more workers and have passed legislation to ensure continuity of services. 

How has your organization supported advocacy efforts for increased funding, greater recognition or policies to deem the social service workforce an essential service provider? Add your voices and engage in the conversation by contributing your comments on this page.

Tirusew Getachew is a social worker at a quarantine centre in Ethiopia, where her work includes needs assessment, family tracing and family reunification. UNICEFEthiopia/2020/NahomTesfaye

Global advocacy for recognition as essential service providers
Multiple global entities have advocated for social workers and other social service workers to be considered essential service providers and are raising awareness of their daily work.

The Statement from U.N. Secretary General António Guterres and a letter from the Group of Friends of Children and the SDGs, endorsed by more than 160 member states, highlight the importance of holistic COVID-19 response plans that ensure well-being and healthy development of children. It calls on national governments and multilateral institutions to work immediately to strengthen ‘child protection in COVID-19’ response frameworks and to provide sufficient donor support to implement these responses effectively. The statement calls for several actions including to: Designate members of the social service workforce (SSW) as essential to prevent and respond to child protection risks; Provide them with appropriate Infection Prevention and Control training, and equip them with personal protective equipment in accordance with World Health Organization (WHO) guidance and national laws; and Ensure that resources are available for national governments and humanitarian actors to fully implement these responses, recognizing the traditional gaps in child protection funding in past humanitarian aid expenditures.

The Joint Leaders’ Statement from global organizations working to end violence against children “calls on governments, the international community and leaders in every sector to urgently respond with a united effort to protect children from the heightened risk of violence, exploitation and abuse as part of the broader response to COVID-19. Governments have a central role to play. They must ensure that COVID-19 prevention and response plans integrate age appropriate and gender sensitive measures to protect all children from violence, neglect and abuse. Child protection services and workers must be designated as essential and resourced accordingly. Working with and supporting governments, our collective response must include: maintaining essential health and social welfare services, including mental health and psychosocial support; providing child protection case management and emergency alternative care arrangements; ensuring social protection for the most vulnerable children and households; continuing care and protection for children in institutions; and communicating with and engaging parents, caregivers and children themselves with evidence-based information and advice.

As an example of advocacy and interagency coordination, the Ugandan government issued a declaration that district probation and community development officers should sit on district intersectoral COVID-19 task forces across the country. These staff are primarily professional social workers, and they are meant to highlight issues of child protection, gender based violence, disability and psychosocial support so that these issues are addressed by the COVID-19 task forces.

National policy support
In many countries, social service workers are advocating for their work to be considered essential so that services continue. Many professional associations and organizations have been successful in attaining recognition by governments for social service workers as frontline service providers in order to continue and adapt social services. 

Under the Prevention and Control of Infectious Diseases Act 1988 (Act 342) in Malaysia, social service workers are considered among essential service providers. Funding has also been allocated for ongoing training and acquiring new skills and knowledge to meet new and increasing needs. 

In states and cities throughout the United States, social workers, case workers and other social service workers have been declared as essential service providers and given flexibility in determining continuity of services. 

When the government closed all social services in Romania, the social work association successfully lobbied ministers to overturn the decision. Then, mobile teams of local law enforcement and social service workers worked in tandem to increase door deliveries of basic food and hygiene products to vulnerable groups, including single parent households, Roma populations and children with disabilities. 

The National Association of Social Workers Uganda brought together many organizations to advocate for social service workers to be recognized as essential service providers and to obtain PPE and an allowance for those working at the quarantine centers. With an expected 2,500 people returning to Uganda from other countries, there is great need for psychosocial support at the quarantine centers. To assist with emergecy mobilization of qualified first responders, the Association is compiling a list of qualified social workers who are ready and able to respond. When the Child Helpline closed during lockdown, the Association and partners also advocated for it to reopen and be recognized as an essential service. 

The South African Council on Social Service Professionals, representing social workers and child and youth care workers, actively advocated to relevant ministries to ensure properly licensed practitioners are considered essential service providers to be able to continue meeting the needs of communities; safety of workers is taken into account by employers; and a permissive work environment is created to ensure maximum service excellence. They worked closely with the Minister on development of policies and directives for social service workers to continue services during lockdown. “I would like to pay special tribute to all our service workers, and particularly our social work professionals, all support staff, as well as professional volunteers, who are out there every day, working hard to ensure that services to the most vulnerable continue, whilst dealing with the personal health threat of contracting the coronavirus,” said Western Cape Minister of Social Development Sharna Fernandez. 

Guidance for Social Workers During Covid-19 Response in Malawi, developed by the Association of Social Workers in Malawi and UNICEF, provides categories of essential social services that must be continued to meet the needs of vulnerable people during COVID-19 and the essential promotive, preventative and responsive functions of the social service workforce. The guidance sets out instructions and key principles related to COVID-19 for all social workers and para-professionals in Malawi, and their employers in government and non- governmental organizations to safely support children, families, and communities; raise professional concerns and questions; and request appropriate support and guidance from employers. 

In the Philippines, Proclamation No. 922 authorized hazard pay to government personnel who physically reported to work during quarantine for COVID-19. Public social workers were among the cadres of workers and personnel eligible to receive hazard pay for each day they were physically reporting for work. 

Increasing workforce numbers and capacity
With COVID-19 funding from USAID, the Government of Cambodia has hired 20 new social workers (in addition to 17 already working in priority provinces for care reform) for four months to provide the additional support during COVID-19. With this new deployment, every province in the country now has a social worker. In particular, these workers are focusing on case management, child protection and prevention of family separation. 

In Bangladesh, where there was an increase of four times the number of calls to the Child Helpline between February and April, UNICEF advocated to the government to reopen child courts, continue birth registration and hire more workers. The country had 3,000 social service workers before the onset of COVID-19 but needs at least 80,000 to meet typical needs. Online training was conducted for new social workers who were hired to assist the Child Helpline center, support institutions and places of detention, and work in key urban and field locations. Advocacy efforts resulted in social workers being considered as essential, critical and lifesaving. 

With 170,263 children affected by COVID-19 school closures in Bhutan, the Ministry of Education activated the Education Emergency Operation Centre under which a mental health and psychosocial support (MHPSS) sub desk was created. To ensure the provision of MHPSS to children, parents and caregivers in need, 147 school counsellors from 20 districts were each assigned a set number of schools to work with. With support from UNICEF, a guidance note on provision of remote PSS to parents and caregivers in Bhutan was developed to support the counsellors and other front liners working with families. All 147 school counsellors (80 male and 76 female) have been trained on how to provide psychosocial support remotely to parents and caregivers and face to face structured psychosocial support to children once the schools reopen. Laja Wangchuk, a participant, said, “The training helped me enhance my professional service delivery in time of the emergency. Especially at this COVID-19 emergency period, students, staff, parents and general public are stressed out more than the usual.” 

In South Africa, a database has been launched for unemployed and graduated social workers to enroll to help in filling roles and hiring of qualified workers. Additionally, a partnership between the National Department of Social Development, HWSETA and University of the Witwatersrand Health Consortium is placing 1,210 newly qualified social work graduates in social development and health roles. 

Community Social Workers (CSW) are a part of the frontline workforce in Armenia. In April 2020, the “Community Level Access to Social Services” (CLASS) project, funded by USAID/DCOF, conducted a needs assessment in the communities to have a clear picture of the CSW role in the communities during the COVID-19 pandemic under the conditions of the lockdown. CSWs work for local governments in a village or cluster of villages with a population of 5,000 or more. Through the end of April, 14,933 families received services, including support in applying for state programs/ resources, referrals to public organizations /programs, financial support, emergency care packages and home visits. In response to the vastly increased workload and burnout of the community social workers who started working 24/7, four additional senior social workers were hired. They keep in touch with the CSWs assigned to them on a daily basis and provide educational, professional and supportive supervision. World Vision is providing training and technical supervision to these 86 CSWs. 

COVID-19 is taking a toll on the mental health & psychosocial well-being of children & caregivers. UNICEF is also supporting governments in Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Tanzania to strengthen the capacity of social workers to provide MHPSS services and deliver other interventions. And in Ethoipia, UNICEF is working closely with the Addis Ababa Bureau of Women, Children and Youth for recruitment, training and deployment of social workers in quarantine centers.

The Iran Association of Social Workers established a system for direct consultative and supervision support to social workers by enlisting 60 university professors and managers of social organizations. A list of specialized areas, available times and mobile phone numbers were provided to social workers to connect with them. The Association also provided an update to the President of Iran on social workers’ responses during the pandemic to gain greater support. 

Integration of social and health services
When social service workers are included in integrated health services and work alongside health workers and other allied workforces, everyone wins. During this unprecedented public health pandemic, social service workers are once again proving the essential, frontline role they play in caring for and protecting individuals and communities. The Alliance recently conducted a survey to gain insight on how social service workers are responding during COVID-19. Survey results show that 28% of social service workers are supporting health staff in provision of health services. 

Medical social workers in Nigeria

Medical social workers in Nigeria are working alongside health workers as frontline workers by providing psychosocial support and community contact tracing. In Colombia, the government launched a cross-institutional social and health framework with the goal of providing better services in order to reduce the high child mortality rates associated with all types of violence. Evidence from South Africa has shown that including child protection alongside health services contributes to supporting HIV prevention goals. These lessons are being applied to the current COVID-19 response to ensure that the work of the social service workforce is included in health responses. 

In Croatia, workers are prioritizing services to middle and high-risk families, and based on case manager assessments, families at high risk are supported with face-to-face services. To meet the growing needs for responsive services to respond to reports of family violence, the Ministry has established special crisis teams. 

Resources to Increase Support
To support social service workers in advocacy efforts for greater planning, development and support while ensuring safety and well-being during the COVID-19 response, the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance has collaborated with the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action, UNICEF and IFSW on a technical note. The Safety and Wellbeing of the Social Service Workforce during COVID-19 Response: Recommended Actions outlines how a well-supported, appropriately equipped, empowered, and protected social service workforce is essential to mitigating the damaging effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The document also  provides guidance on how to support the social service workforce and empower them to safely serve children, families, and communities during the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition, the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance has developed advocacy materials to support the workforce in advocating for increased support, including a Global Advocacy Toolkit for the Social Service Workforce and a Call to Action: Strengthening the Social Service Workforce to Better Protect Children and Achieve the SDGs. 

Several other technical notes also call for recognition for child protection and other roles of the social service workforce to be designed as essential, including: COVID-19: Protecting Children from Violence, Abuse, and Neglect in the Home; Working with Communities to Keep Children Safe; and Protection of Children during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Children and Alternative Care. Other technical notes relevant to the social service workforce can be found on the Alliance website.

Share Wins for the Social Service Workforce
This is an unprecedented time to advocate for the social service workforce. The International Federation of Social Workers, in a recent article, noted the speed at which change is taking place regarding recognition of the role of social workers, stating, “Change in the delivery of social services normally takes years. There are exceptions, where political direction coincides with the aspirations of the communities and social services workforce, but these are rare. The journey over the last five months is something new: a change at global level caused by a pandemic, where social workers have been and continue to be at the forefront advocating and leading change in nearly every country.” 

It is important to capture and highlight achievements that are happening at such speed. This blog only begins to list the many policy and funding wins achieved by the social service workforce due to their essential role during the COVID-19 response. We encourage everyone to share wins your organization or association has helped to achieve so others can learn from these successes and together, we can jointly advocate for continued change. What advocacy efforts have you undertaken? How has the social service workforce received greater funding support or policy recognition? Add your voices and engage in the conversation by contributing your comments here.

Jakes Jacobs serves breakfast to boys living on the streets of Cape Town, South Africa in order to develop a rapport with the kids. Shelton Tshuna ensures children affected by HIV in Chinotima, Zimbabwe, receive ART treatments and attend school. In Umbumbulu, South Africa, Lungi Mkhize provides development and therapeutic care to vulnerable and at-risk youth.

Child and youth care workers (CYCWs) focus on the infant, child and adolescent within the context of family, the community and the life span. This unique work is carried out wherever children live, play or learn.

This week, during the annual Child and Youth Care Workers’ Week and on Thank a Youth Worker Day, we recognize the passionate contributions and dedication of those in the child and youth care field. This special week is an opportunity to celebrate the important role this cadre plays in improving wellbeing for vulnerable children while sharing information about this growing profession.

The 1992 meeting of the International Child and Youth Care Education Consortium adopted a formal definition of child and youth care practice: Child and Youth Care practice includes skills in assessing client and program needs, designing and implementing programs and planned environments, integrating developmental, preventive and therapeutic requirements into the life space, contributing to the development of knowledge and professions, and participating in systems interventions through direct care, supervision, administration, teaching, research, consultation and advocacy.

CYCWs build relationships with children through interaction in typical daily routines. They act as a child’s confidant and provide support in any area as needed in a child’s life. They stay with the child and family until their help is no longer needed.

For Jakes Jacobs and his colleagues, building relationships starts by cooking breakfast for street children at a drop-in center, where they discuss street life, careers, family, drugs and gangs. “It takes time to win their trust,” he says. He then follows up on what the children tell him by making home visits to assess a child’s family’s situation, provide food or school uniforms if needed, and determines if reintegration is possible. In his experience, it can take two to three years of hard work to persuade a child who has been on the streets for some time to begin to risk change. “If there are tantrums and crying along the way, these signal success because they show engagement. These signs of engagement are markers in the progression from street life to shelter to a children’s home to the family home of origin.”

As the profession continues to grow, so, too, do the opportunities for career advancement. There are now many universities around the globe offering advanced degrees in child and youth care work as well as many specialized certificate programs for the myriad of skills necessary for this career path. Several organizations and professional associations have been created specifically to support child and youth care workers.

One such association is the National Association of Child Care Workers in South Africa, for which Lungi works. They have developed a unique model for training child and youth care workers to meet needs in their immediate communities. Meaning “courage” in IsiZulu, the Isibindi program is training 10,000 child and youth care workers through a five-year scale up funded by PEPFAR through USAID.

“I’m happy to advocate for child and youth and be of service in 18 different communities in my area,” says Lungi. “I’m also proud to have had an impact on over 400 orphaned, vulnerable and at-risk children, youth and their families. One must always remember that if you help a child develop, you help our nation develop.”

Aspects of the Isibindi program are being replicated or built upon by the National Association of Child Care Workers Zambia and the governments of Zimbabwe and Kenya.

The Para Professional Interest Group of the Global Social Service Workforce Alliance has drawn from the expertise of NACCW and many others to develop a competency framework, guiding principles and functions for para professionals that includes a section on functions and competencies specific to child and youth care workers. The framework has been field tested and the first edition was released during Social Service Workforce Week in September 2015.

While this week is a specific occasion to recognize and thank people like Jakes, Shelton and Lungi, every day of the year we are appreciative to the hard work of the countless CYCWs who make a difference in our communities.

You can help recognize and promote the work of child and youth care workers. Learn more about child and youth care work from these organizations:

• Child and Youth Care Network (CYC-Net)
• International Federation of Educative Communities (FICE International)
• National Association of Child Care Workers, South Africa (NACCW)
• Ontario Association of Child and Youth Care, Canada (OACYC)
• FICE Africa

by Heather Modlin, PhD, Provincial Director, Key Assets Newfoundland and Labrador, Canada

Self-care is a hot topic these days, particularly for those of us in a helping profession. We know that working closely with people who are struggling makes us vulnerable to struggling ourselves. As we interface with the pain of others we are susceptible to experiencing vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue and burnout. Add to this the long hours, isolation and shortage of resources with which many in the social service workforce are familiar and the risks multiply. It is important to acknowledge the toll that working in this sector can have on practitioners and openly discuss ways in which the risks can be mediated. 

I am not a fan of the traditional self-care rhetoric. While there is nothing wrong with taking care of ourselves, I am concerned that sometimes the discourse on self-care crosses over into self-indulgence. Self-care is really about monitoring and knowing ourselves, taking responsibility for ourselves and making sure that we are the best we can be in every functional domain. Self-care is about continuous growth and development. 

The most useful self-care framework I have come across, from the Child Welfare League of Canada, that focuses on helping people recognize what gives them energy and what depletes their energy across various functional domains. Download in pdf format.   

The premise of this framework is that we can’t – nor do we need to – stop doing the things that deplete our energy. We just need to ensure that as we use up energy, we concurrently create energy. We also need to recognize that this must be individualized – generalized self-care platitudes can be harmful when we assume that they apply to everyone in the same way. Let me provide an example. 

Several years ago I was teaching a group of child and youth care students in their last semester of a two year diploma program.  These bright and committed students, who until this semester had been showing up for class enthusiastic and eager to participate in the learning process, were now dragging themselves through the door, looking tired and demoralized, muttering under their breath about how burnt out they were. I was concerned about them and also curious about how they had gotten to this place, and I decided to spend a day exploring self-care. We did the exercise above. One of the students was a single parent. In addition to attending school full-time and raising her three children, she had worked a part-time job in the retail sector. Bowing to pressure from her family and friends that she was going to “burn herself out” she quit her job. When she completed her self-care table, she identified that the things that depleted her energy were her children and school. Being at work, in a job she loved, gave her energy. In a misguided effort to prevent herself from becoming stressed out, this student gave up the part of her life that was keeping her energized. Even worse, some of the activities she had engaged in with her children, that gave her energy, were no longer affordable since she had lost the income from her job. After doing this exercise, the student went back to work and her symptoms of “burn out” immediately disappeared. 

This example is not representative of all situations, and it does not reflect scenarios in which employees are negatively impacted by the stress of the job. This example is also not intended to imply that burn out is not a real thing – it is. Sometimes, however, when we think we are burnt out we may be just tired. We may need to get our energy back up. To do this, we need to know ourselves and we need to recognize what we have the capacity to control. We may not be able to control our work hours, our organizational environment, the challenges of the work itself, or even what consumes our time outside of work, but we can control our mindset. This is where self-care starts.

Related Resources 

As we wrap up Social Service Workforce Week with this focus on the importance of self-care for the social service workforce, some suggested further reading:

• The Alliance brought social service researchers and practitioners together to review existing evidence on social service workforce strengthening through the Building Evidence Interest Group. They produced a report, which includes a section on staff care, one of the more heavily researched methods related to workforce support. Read the report here.
• The Guidelines to Strengthen the Social Service Workforce for Child Protection also include a section on supporting the workforce and focusing on staff care.
• For guidance for organizations wishing to institutionalize staff care, particularly in emergency or humanitarian aid settings, a key resource is Essential Principles of Staff Care: Practices to Strengthen Resilience in International Humanitarian and Development Organizations
• The Essential Principles for Self-care website links to many other related resources on the topic.