Supervision, part 1: Equipped to lead

Throughout this series the topic of supervision across early years settings will be fully explored. We will be asking: What constitutes effective supervision? How does supervision promote positive relationships and teamwork? How can effective supervision be embedded within organisations?

Clare Tickell's (June 2011) independent report of the review of the EYFS highlighted the role of supervision in improving practice and maintaining effective early years provision. Her recommendation for the implementation of sector-wide supervision, including childminders, underlined the need for support, performance management and continuous professional development, and this is specified within the revised EYFS. This week we take a closer look at why supervision has been among the changes to the revised EYFS.

A tradition of supervision in the helping professions

If early years practitioners are to provide the kind of encouragement and support necessary for the support, development and challenge of children and families, they need to be encouraged, supported and challenged as well - ideally through formal supervision.

Within the professions of counselling, psychotherapy, social work and social care, it has long been accepted that people who work with complexity, discouragement and distress, are at risk of becoming overburdened, discouraged and distressed as well (John, 2008, p56). Those practitioners are required to take part in regular supervision, which helps them to look at how their work is affecting them and to maintain, or regain, a more helpful distance from the needs of others. Similarly, long-established voluntary organisations such as Action for Children and Family Action, have well-developed supervision policies and procedures that link with safeguarding and protecting the welfare of vulnerable children and adults, as well as with performance management.

Safeguarding and Welfare Requirements

In her independent report Clare Tickell wrote, 'The creation of a culture of safeguarding is something which is impossible to define through legal requirements. Some legal requirements - such as the need for those adults coming into contact with children to have vetting and CRB checks - add to the safety of settings. However, I believe that too many requirements can create a false sense of security, and can dilute the sense of responsibility which should ultimately sit with providers, leaders and managers of early years settings. It is their responsibility to ensure that each setting meets the requirements of the EYFS, reflecting their individual circumstances and offering appropriate provision, properly managed and supervised, for children in their care (Tickell Review, pp 38-39).'

Ideally, policies, procedures and leadership, along with inter and intra organisational recognition of the importance of safeguarding, provide the overall container and mechanisms for holding the strong emotions that are aroused by issues that arise in our efforts to protect children. However, promoting and safeguarding the well-being and healthy development of children, families, communities and staff teams - and working across professional boundaries within threatened and changing organisations - are all about managing complexity and contradiction. To do so we need to be able to recognise, contain and survive our own and others' pain, fears and anxieties. These aspects of emotional intelligence - recognising, containing and surviving our own and others' strong emotions, rather than disowning, projecting or 'leaking' those feelings on to others - require support structures and safe spaces, such as individual and team supervision, that offer regular opportunities for reflecting and communicating openly, sharing perceptions, practice dilemmas and concerns with others, and together deciding on a way forward.

Emotional contagion and the rule of optimism

As suggested above, when we work with distress, discouragement or hopelessness we are at risk of feeling distressed, discouraged or hopeless as well. This is sometimes referred to as emotional contagion. That is, our ability to empathise with others' experiences makes us vulnerable to 'catching' their feelings, including their sense of urgency that something must be done right now. As those who work with young children know, they often experience and express their needs with intensity and urgency, which are more or less understood and contained by those who care for them. In reviewing our work with children and families, we need to look at how the work is affecting us and how we might regain and maintain perspective. Often we need to slow things down and review circumstances and options systematically and carefully. This does not mean that cut off from a child, parent or family's need or pain, or retreat into paperwork, but that we are able to achieve realistic hopefulness, and ideally identify more effective ways of thinking about and working with them.

A reluctance to register difficulties can arise from the optimistic view that parents are inherently loving and resourceful and that inadequate, even harmful, parenting is because of unfair circumstances in parents' lives, which prevent them from parenting as well as they might. Early years practitioners work hard to build positive, respectful and supportive relationships with parents, and they are often successful in helping parents to understand and meet their children's needs and to care for them more lovingly and effectively. It can be hard to admit that the needs of some parents are such that they are unable to consider the needs of, or look after, their children adequately, and we need to intervene.

The very prospect of children being taken into care can make it hard for us to take action. We may worry about what will happen to them, whether they will be looked after any better within the care system - or perhaps we have had experience of care proceedings going wrong. Ironically, it is at times when we most need to reflect carefully and attempt to anticipate the probable outcomes of any action we may take that things can spin out of control.

This has to do with the phenomenon of emotional contagion, as well as with professional differences in ways of perceiving and responding to safeguarding matters. Open communication and dialogue within individual and team supervision, along with integrated working and partnerships with trusted colleagues in other agencies are essential in ensuring the implementation of co-ordinated and well-considered safeguarding procedures.

NPQICL and building leadership capacity

Clare Tickell's report acknowledged the central role of leadership in ensuring that EYFS values and standards are embedded and result in consistently high quality practice. She applauded the effectiveness of the National Professional Qualification in Integrated Centre Leadership (NPQICL) in developing more effective leadership across professional boundaries within early years settings, as well as across agencies. Although not mentioned within Clare Tickell's report, leadership mentoring has been a central feature of NPQICL, explicitly encouraging regular supervision of practitioners. Through mentoring, leaders are encouraged to reflect critically on their roles, responsibilities and relationships - including recognising and building leadership and 'leaderfulness' in others. There is understanding that realising the capabilities of practitioners also depends on opportunities for critical self-reflection, ideally in the form of regular supervision.

Continuing professional development

There was much in Clare Tickell's report about ensuring that early years practitioners are well-trained and engaged in continuing professional development (CPD). This also is reflected in the revised EYPS standards. CPD can be achieved only when positive relationships between leaders and practitioners are built and maintained, ideally through regular supervision, which focuses on current practice strengths, overall performance and learning needs. Within a supervisory relationship based upon mutual trust, the practitioner is invited to reflect on their practice, what's going well and not so well, to seek support - and be challenged - to take risks, improve their practice and expand their professional prospects.

Karen John, PhD, is consultant psychologist and psychotherapist, Pen Green Research Base

Part 2 in Nursery World 25 June-8 July will focus on what constitutes effective supervision

REFERENCES

• Clare Tickell's review of the EYFS is at http://www.education.gov.uk/tickellreview

• John, K, 'Sustaining the leaders of children's centres: The role of leadership mentoring'. European Early Education Research Journal Special Issue: Leadership & Management, 16 (1): 53-66.