Children's Services
Practice NOTES
For North Carolina's Child Welfare Workers ►
From the NC Division of Social Services and the Family and Children's Resource Program
Volume 15, Number 3
June 2010
This publication for child
welfare professionals is pro¬
duced by the North Carolina
Division of Social Services and
the Family and Children's Re¬
source Program, part of the
Jordan Institute for Families
within the School of Social
Work at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill.
In summarizing research, we try
to give you new ideas for refin¬
ing your practice. However, this
publication is not intended to
replace child welfare training,
regular supervision, or peer
consultation — only to enhance
them.
Let us hear from you!
To comment about something
that appears in Practice Notes,
please contact:
John McMahon
Jordan Institute for Families
School of Social Work
UNC-Chapel Hill
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-3550
jdmcmaho@email.unc.edu
Newsletter Staff
Mellicent Blythe
Lane Cooke
John McMahon
Tiffany Price
Deb Vassar
Visit Our Website
www.practicenotes.org
STRIVING FOR EXCELLENCE IN SUPERVISION
Child welfare supervisors are coaches, men¬
tors, and evaluators responsible for the qual¬
ity of services children and families receive.
The tone and expectations they set are so
important that some have called them the
"keepers of the culture" for their agencies.
All of this means that supervisors have a
powerful influence on families and on a child
welfare agency's ability to achieve the safe¬
ty, permanence, and well-being of children.
It's a big job. Practice Notes can't reduce
the number of things for which supervisors
are responsible, but we can try to make their
burden a little lighter. In this issue we high¬
light supervisory practices that can develop
your staff and improve
their satisfaction and per¬
formance — key ingredients
to improved outcomes for
families.
The articles show the
parallel process between
what supervisors ask workers to do with
families, and what in turn supervisors need
to provide for their workers. While front line
workers strive to engage families in a
productive relationship, supervisors strive to
engage and empower their workers, their
community partners, and their peers to
create a more successful agency. ♦
Enhancing Your Unit's Performance
USING PARTNERSHIP IN SUPERVISION by Deb Vassar
Over the last several years North Caroli- served, "In the past a leader
na's child welfare professionals have widely
embraced the "Six Principles of Partnership"
as indispensible tools for engaging families
and achieving the outcomes we seek. But
these principles have the potential to affect
more than just our interactions with fami¬
lies. If we can effectively apply them to the
supervisory context, the principles of part¬
nership can also transform and improve staff
performance.
OUR WORK HAS CHANGED
In today's workplace, the challenges we face
are fast-paced and relentless. Steven Covey
calls this "permanent whitewater," implying
that we no longer encounter occasional
stretches where the river of our work life gets
wider and slows down. Instead, it's just swift,
surging rapids, day in and day out.
In this context, the old ways of leading
and supervising don't work as well. As man¬
agement expert Ken Blanchard has ob-
was a boss. Today's leaders
must be partners with their
people. ..they no longer can
lead solely based on positional power."
Blanchard is saying that mere
"supervision" isn't enough anymore. To adapt
to today's workplace, supervisors coni. p. 2
The Principles of Partnership
The NC Division of Social Services' vision is that all
programs it administers will embrace family-cen¬
tered practice principles and provide services to
promote security and safety for all. Among the val¬
ues it sees underlying a family-centered approach
include these six "principles of partnership":
1 . Everyone desires respect
2. Everyone needs to be heard
3. Everyone has strengths
4. Judgments can wait
5. Partners share power
6. Partnership is a process
(NCDSS, 201 0; Appalachian Family Innovations, 2003)
