The growth of professional supervision within the health and social services in Aotearoa New Zealand has been well documented (Maidment & Beddoe, 2012; May & Stanfield, 2010), and at the same time the importance of evaluating professional supervision has been promoted as best practice. How this evaluation is translated into practice remains unclear and there have been repeated calls for further research into the place, role and process of evaluation in supervision (O’Donoghue, 2006; Beddoe, 2010).
This workshop will present the preliminary findings of the first stage of an interprofessional study which explored the current methods of evaluating supervision practice within four professions: counselling, mental health nursing, psychology and social work. Twenty four semi- structured interviews were conducted with supervisors, supervisees and managers from each of the professions. The preliminary results indicate a range of practice from formal evaluation to no evaluation at all. Many research participants expressed an interest about evaluation but were uncertain as to how this could be achieved in practice.
This workshop will invite participants to consider the preliminary findings of this research and to contribute their views to the research data.