Starting work as a newly-qualified social worker (NQSW) is exciting: but it can be challenging, particularly if you are relocating to a rural or remote area. You may need to establish new social and professional networks while maintaining important links with your friends and family. Social work is a demanding job, so it’s important to have people and activities in your life which support your work-life balance and resilience.
In this section, we offer some tools and resources to support NQSWs to consider ways to build and sustain their support networks.
My Support Network
The My Support Network document offers simple questions and pointers to support NQSWs to consider how to ensure that their professional and social links develop and remain strong.
The My Support Network template can help you identify who or what supports your resilience and wellbeing as an NQSW. You will see there are six support areas identified with some suggestions provided, so you can adapt the template to suit your own situation:
Case studies
[coming soon]
Helpful resources
[links to other resources on their way)]
Working in a remote or rural area can mean that, in contrast to urban areas, newly-qualified social workers (NQSWs) don’t have the third sector organisations, specialist services or community supports available from other organisations. You may need to undertake a broader range of intervention work yourself. This requires creativity and the ability to collate resources you can use with different people.
Developing your social worker ‘toolbox’
Over time, you will develop your own social worker’s ‘toolbox’: here are some links to get you started.
Social worker Toolbox. Free tools and resources for use with children and adults.
Rediscovering and mainstreaming community social work in Scotland (Turbett 2020). In this IRISS insight publication, Colin Turbett explores the role of community social work, the strengths of its approach and it’s application in social work practice.
Case studies
[coming soon: links to documents or media files]
Travel in remote and rural areas
Travelling in a remote or rural area can require careful planning, especially if you have recently moved there.
We asked some social work practitioners who work in rural areas for their strategies:
- Ask service users for a mobile number and any visible landmarks if you are travelling to their home in the dark.
- Think about where you will park when visiting remote areas as people may recognise your car.
- Don’t park where you can easily be blocked in, make sure you can leave the property and any access to it when you want to.
- If you need to ask for directions, think about how to do this while protecting confidentiality.
- Plan your visits carefully to make the best use of time and allow realistic times for travel.
- If you aren’t comfortable driving in certain conditions don’t take chances. It’s not just snow and ice you need to consider but high winds, causeways and single track roads. If you are living on or visiting an island, will you be able to get home?
- If you are not sure about a journey, discuss it with another social worker or your manager and check if there is a team risk assessment. (If not, can you develop your own one?).
- Plan your journey to visit friends and family in advance so you can do this in an emergency if needed.
Helpful resources
[links on their way]
Your experience of living and working in a rural community may vary from other newly-qualified social workers (NQSWs) depending on your personal and professional circumstances. Different factors will influence how you adapt to your new role.
It’s important to understand the rural economy and the challenges of living in a remote or rural area, as well as to develop knowledge of the community in which you are working.
[video link coming soon]
Living and working as a social worker in a rural area
NQSWs and other rural practitioners can be neighbours or members of the broader community and have a formal or statutory role. This requires the development of specific skills to manage relationships and boundaries. Below are some reflective questions to consider:
- Did you grow up in the area where you work now, or live in the area before social work training? If so, how might your relationships with members of the community change?
- Have you previously lived and worked in a rural area? If so, what skills and knowledge do you have which will help you?
- Were you a student in the team or area where you are working? How might your experiences support your role as an NQSW?
- Did you move into the area from an urban area? If so, what is different about working in this area?
- Are you single? If so, how might you get to know people?
- Do you have a family? If so, how will you manage the boundaries between family life and work?
- What do you need to know about the culture of the area you are working in? Are there different ‘thresholds’ to areas you previously worked in?
- Whatever your situation, there will be some common challenges for NQSWs around how boundaries are managed when living and working in a rural area.
[links to documents or media files on their way]
Helpful resources
Glass, J., Bynner, C. and Chapman, C. (2020). Glasgow: Children’s Neighbourhoods
Scotland
Colin Turbett. (2019). Glasgow: The Institute for Research and Innovation in Social Services (IRISS)
Gillian Ritch. (2018). Aberdeen: The Robert Gordon University
.
[links to other resources coming soon]
This page is currently under development
Newly-qualified social workers in remote and rural areas
The vast majority (97%) of Scotland’s land mass is defined as rural; it is inhabited by 17% of the population. Colin Turbett (in his paper, Rural Social Work in Scotland: IRISS, 2019) lays out the implications of this for social work and other public services.
Despite improvements in transport links, he notes that “differences between rural and urban living are still pronounced. The Scottish Government looks at this in terms of a continuum, with intensely populated urban areas like Glasgow at one end, and sparsely populated islands at the other.
“Geographical location on this continuum will help shape a person’s identity. It will also determine choices available to them, with affordability a factor. From both these factors, stem social advantage and disadvantage. Proximity to an urban area that can be accessed easily will result in a completely different life experience to one at the remote rural end of the continuum.
“Social work and other public services [including important third sector organisations] provided in rural areas with sparse populations are especially expensive to provide. Cuts [in public spending] are felt proportionally harder if services are not extensive in the first place.”
Working as a newly-qualified social worker in rural areas brings opportunities and challenges which are different to working in urban areas. Social workers need particular skills and knowledge to work effectively within rural communities.
We are working with stakeholders to help us develop resources for newly-qualified social workers on this page. These cover:
- Issues to consider when planning to work in a rural or remote area
- Helpful resources
- Developing your social worker ‘toolbox’
- Case studies
- Travel in remote and rural areas
- My support network
- Helpful resources
…
Iriss rural social work resources
- To further support you, we recommend Iriss rural social work resources
[We welcome your suggestions about themes or resources which would be helpful to include on this page.]
Revisiting how social workers learn in the workplace
We want to pause to consider what we are really talking about when we plan for supporting NQSWs to learn through the early career stage.
There are several things to reflect on: What do we mean by learning?; What do we value as individuals and organisations in terms of learning?;What is it really like to learn as a social worker and what does that actually involve?; How do we develop the best opportunities for social workers to learn through work?
What do we mean by learning?
There are many theories about how individuals learn, how organisations learn and how we facilitate learning. Social work as a profession strongly promotes reflective learning, self-awareness and reflexivity. We will be including some information about learning theories in the next stage of the website development. It is interesting to think about what we mean by learning, what we think social workers need to learn, and how they learn. In terms of workplace learning, there are rich and diverse opportunities for social workers to learn through the direct work that they do. Understanding more about the nature of how social workers learn in the workplace can help us think about how we maximise the potential and value of this aspect of professional learning.
What do we value as individuals and organisations in terms of learning?
If you can pause for a moment and think about one of the most important things you have learned as a social worker or as a professional in your career. Then make some notes.
- How did you learn this?
- What was it you learned?
- Where did you learn this?
- Who supported or influenced this learning?
Many different activities lead to learning. These include formal, informal and self-directed things that individuals, teams and organisations might do. Although guidance for continuing professional learning highlights the range of possibilities that count as learning, many social workers and managers focus on organised training sessions.
Our most significant learning experiences can be through so many different aspects of our work. We are drawing from some recent research in Scotland (Ferguson, 2021) that explored the lived experiences of social workers learning through work. The study highlights that learning in social workers’ workplaces can be incredibly potent in relation to the kind of work they are doing, yet it is not a primary focus in planning for continuing professional learning.
What is it really like to learn as a social worker and what does that actually involve?
The research was concerned with going back to explore the nature of learning in the workplace, for social workers. The study was located at the intersection of different fields of knowledge about individual learning; organisational learning; social work professional learning; and workplace learning. The central research question, “What are the lived experiences of social workers’ learning in the workplace?”, was at the core of the study, drawing from and contributing to these different areas of existing knowledge and offering new insights into how these fields connect.
Social workers learning in the workplace
The study found that learning to be, and learning as, a social worker in, through and at work is an intricate web of sensory and emotional experiences while negotiating and navigating places, spaces and tasks. The lived experiences of social workers can be understood as involving the seven superordinate themes for the group, Journey of the self; Navigating tasks; Navigating landscape and place; Learning through the body; Learning through others; Practices and conceptions of learning; and, Learning by chance. Striking metaphors helped social workers convey their experience of learning in the workplace that encompassed these themes.
Learning as a complex web
Learning as a complex web (Ferguson, 2021)
The themes of social workers’ learning in the workplace should not be considered merely on a surface or simplistic level. It is important to pause and consider what these different themes might mean for an individual social worker, then how these might combine. The threads of the relationship between these themes form a web that is unique to the individual social worker, deeply connected to their embodied experience of learning and the type of work opportunities that they undertake. Understanding the nature and complexity of individual social workers’ experiences can help us design more effective workplace continuing professional learning opportunities.
We will be linking to key ideas from this research and adding more information in the next stage of the website development.
You can find out more about the research and findings “When David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust” The Lived Experiences of Social Workers Learning Through Work (Ferguson, 2021).
How do we develop the best opportunities for social workers to learn through work?
Several important implications arise from Ferguson’s research for those involved in supporting social workers’ learning in the workplace.
- We need to acknowledge the intensity of the emotional and embodied aspect of social workers’ learning.
- Social workers are vital to each other’s learning.
- Learning through direct work with real people who use services is absolutely vital.
- Direct practice is essential to equip social workers with the kind of learning that they need.
- We need to understand and value learning through work tasks and consider how we allocate tasks to social workers.
- The personal value and commitment of social workers to their learning is of fundamental importance. We need to consider how frameworks and regulatory requirements dovetail with this.
Find out more in our Promoting NQSW professional learning and development in the supported year resources
References
Ferguson, G M. (2021). “When David Bowie created Ziggy Stardust” The Lived Experiences of Social Workers Learning Through Work. The Open University
The seven-eyed model of supervision
This widely used model developed over 35 years (Hawkins and McMahon, 2020) covers various modes that may be used in one-to-one supervision and supports enhanced relational practice.
These modes are combined with the draft standards for the NQSW supported year to make an at-a-glance way of ensuring supervision is comprehensive and relevant. This is covered further including the application of the Standards in Social Work Education ethics and using a case vignette in the suggested training session outlined for supervisors that are included on our website.
It is not necessarily intended that these modes are all used in each session, but it allows supervisors to monitor that supervision is holistic. For example, modes two and six of focusing on the NQSW’s strategies and interventions and the supervisor offering support and advice, may tend to dominate in a casework approach.
The following modes and linked NQSW characteristics will help prompt the conversations and approaches needed to help the NQSW to meet supported year practice expectations, ensuring a real focus on the person we work with and keep attention to the wellbeing of the NQSW.
| Supervision focus and NQSW characteristics |
| 1: Focus on the people using services and what and how they present |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Critical thinking, professional judgement and decision making |
| Communication, engagement and relationship-based professional practice |
| 2: Focus on the NQSW’s strategies and interventions |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Promoting wellbeing, support and protection |
| Use of knowledge, research and evidence in practice |
| 3: Focus on the relationship between the NQSW and people using services |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Communication, engagement and relationship-based professional practice |
| Working with complexity in unpredictable and ambiguous contexts |
| 4: Focus on the NQSW’s skills and wellbeing in relation to their role |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Self-awareness and reflexivity |
| Critical thinking, professional judgement and decision making |
| 5: Focus on the supervisory relationship |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Use of knowledge, research and evidence in practice |
| Self-awareness and reflexivity |
| 6: Focus on the supervisor offering support from their own experience |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Working with complexity in unpredictable and ambiguous contexts |
| Promoting wellbeing, support and protection |
| 7: Focus on the wider contexts in which the work happens |
| NQSW characteristics: |
| Professional leadership |
| Ethics, values and rights-based practice |
The potential of the seven-eyed model for NQSW supervision
This model gives us a potential model to use as part of negotiating supervision in the context of evolving practice and policies. Using such a model could help us nudge supervision away from a case management focus that is too narrow and incorporate person-centred behaviours in line with national policy initiatives.
One such initiative is ‘The Promise’ implementation plan following the Independent Care Review which has been widely adopted across government agencies. The workforce plan centralises the importance of supervision.
‘things that matter to children, including how loved they feel, how their rights are upheld and how stigma is being reduced. This must emphasise support for the worker and their relationship with the child over-evaluation of performance‘.
The Promise, Scotland
Another organisation holding services accountable to policy intentions is Inclusion Scotland, the national disabled people’s organisation whose motto is “nothing about us without us”. This directly relates to the use of the model to bring the people who use services into the supervision process. They emphasise the vision requires a supported workforce.
‘people working in social work and social care support [should be] respected, valued and rewarded for the work they do. They feel and are empowered in their roles‘
Inclusion Scotland
The seven-eyed model explicitly prompts a focus on the wider issues including embodying professional values at mode seven. This is central to the BASW Code of Ethics.
‘Human rights and social justice serve as the motivation and justification for social work action. In solidarity with those who are disadvantaged, the profession strives to alleviate poverty and to work with vulnerable and oppressed people in order to promote social inclusion‘.
BASW
The six ethical principles of the Standards in Social Work Education in Scotland are cross-referenced to this model. NQSWs will be familiar working with those throughout their training and they continue to support the journey through the NQSW supported year and beyond. They echo much of the above and are expressed as:
- Social justice and equality
- Respecting diversity
- Human rights and dignity
- Self-determination
- Partnership, participation and co-production
- Honesty and integrity
Reflective questions for you as a supervisor
- Read through the associated training pack for supervisors and vignette
- Apply the model to the vignette, listing interventions you might make for each of the modes.
Information and links
Go to supervisor resource 14 – Implementation of good supervision
Find out about the workshops that Martin Kettle and Pearse McCusker ran as part of our pilot work in the west of Scotland that informed the approach to the NQSW supported year.
Adaptable materials for your organisation
We introduce two templates here for supporting effective supervision for NQSW. These templates are linked with the approach detailed in the effective supervision overview for supervisors. You may already be using different approaches and templates in your practice that fit with your organisation. Please also see the training material downloads which are linked with these templates.
Tools and template downloads
You can download and adapt the reflective journal for NQSWs. This is made up of the different reflective questions that we have introduced on the website. We will be updating this as our website develops so please check back for new versions.
Supervision templates shared by organisations in Scotland (coming soon)
We also recommend SSSC Supervision Learning Resource
Developing your knowledge and skills for working with people who live with dementia
Do you work with people who live with dementia? SSSC have an online resource to help social workers and other professionals implement the Promoting Excellence learning framework and the Standards of Care for Dementia in Scotland within their practice.
This is a detailed and focused learning resource which is ideal if you want to develop more knowledge and skills for working with people who live with dementia.
You will find the link to the Enhanced dementia practice for social workers resource below.
Shared by NQSWs
- NQSWs told us they liked to use Alzheimer Scotland resources
- These cover many aspects of daily living for individuals and carers
- https://www.alzscot.org
References and links
Please remember that if you click on these links they will take you to information and resourcs that are external to the SSSC NQSW website.
This is a specific learning resource for social workers which you can access from SSSC Enhanced dementia practice for social workers
The resource is currently being updated so you can let us know if you find any broken links.
For general introductory information about dementia, you can find links to guides and strategy from Public Health Scotland Public health Scotland Dementia Information
We’d also recommend the Psychology of Dementia team at NES and the resource Promoting Psychological Wellbeing people with dementia
Our new online guide for Dementia Ambassadors and other supporting people living with dementia can be found here Information and advice for Dementia Ambassadors
Different models of supervision
Many different models help explain the interaction between stakeholders and the different functions of supervision. Supervision policies often refer to a three or four-function model of supervision.
Morrison (2010) identified management, professional, and developmental aspects and added the role of mediation in recognition of the role of supervisors. He saw supervisors as the main link between frontline workers and management structures.
These multiple dynamics of supervision are set out by Kettle (2015), who highlights that a “task-focused approach fails to take account of the interaction between these functions,” or to “situate the dynamics of the supervisory process within the wider organisational or inter-agency context”.
Proctor (2008) advocates a three-part supervision model that has been influential, and these terms are often discussed in wider literature including the very helpful SSSC Supervision Learning Resource (SSSC, 2016).
The key domains are shown in the table below.
| Normative | Ensures that staff work within a safe framework for practice Maintain trust and professional standards Exploring options within the supervision session |
| Formative | The learning function Sharing knowledge and skills and experiences Problem solving and skills development Assist with understanding the people who use services better Explore alternative ways of working |
| Restorative | Support for personal/professional development Building morale and confidence Ensure staff function within a safe framework for practice Maintaining their professional standards |
Proctor (2008)
Developing different methods of supervision
A learning organisation will use multiple methods to support staff development rather than expecting everything to be provided by a line manager in individual supervision (Tsui, 2017). This may incorporate peer and group approaches, mentorship as well as consultation and coaching. Peer group work is explored in the training outline for NQSWs. The supervisor training sessions included on this website has a focus on individual models that help to take account of multiple needs.
Heron (2001) set out a model which helps us think more about the variety of interventions that might happen in supervision. Both authoritative and facilitative interventions are needed but some of the facilitative needs may also be achieved in peer-group work (particularly cathartic and catalytic interventions).
| Authoritative interventions |
| Prescriptive – Explicitly direct the NQSW by giving advice and direction |
| Informative – Provide information to instruct and guide the NQSW |
| Confronting – Challenge the NQSW’s behaviour or attitude |
| Facilitative interventions |
| Cathartic – Helping the NQSW to express/overcome thoughts or emotions that they have not previously confronted |
| Catalytic – Help the NQSW reflect, discover and learn for themselves. Move toward self-reflection, self-direction and self-awareness |
| Supportive – Build up the confidence of the NQSW by focusing on their competence, qualities and achievements |
Heron (2001)
Developmental models
There are several developmental models which are helpful when thinking about the domains of motivation, autonomy and awareness in supervision.
As with all models it aids our thinking rather than having a linear or universal application. Factors including career history, such as a prior experience of the care sector, may impact our developmental journey.
The categories set out in the table below are adapted from a model advanced by Stoltenberg and McNeill (2010).
| Level 1 self-centred (Can I make it in this work?) |
| We may be focused on getting it right and the feeling of ongoing assessment or may be frustrated by not being able to get on with it after intense assessments and scrutiny in successive placements. |
| We may be feeling overwhelmed at times by greater caseloads and conflicted about doing a ‘good enough job’ rather than a comprehensive one. |
| The supervisor provides a safe and structured container with regular positive feedback. |
| Level 2 Client-centred (Can I help this client make it?) |
| The supervisor may be less structured and reduce direct advice, legislation and policy guidance. |
| Support is offered for occasional swings between feeling skilled and not able to cope with the role and needing to negotiate or ask for help. |
| As the supervisory alliance grows it is seen more as support for practice than continuous assessment by the organisation. |
| Level 3 Process-centred (How are we relating together?) |
| Supervision becomes a joint task, more co-productive and with more power balance. |
| Supervisees are less likely to use individual theory or prescribed forms of assessment and intervention as they become more comfortable with using their strengths and different range of styles in client work. |
| They become more self-supervising of casework and their overall development |
| Level 4 Process-in-context centred (How do processes interpenetrate?) |
| As a supervisee’s skills become more refined they become integrated with the worker’s effective use of self. |
| They come knowing how they want to use the session and the supervisor’s strengths. |
| The supervisee may be a supervisor or practice teacher themselves by this point. |
adapted from Stoltenberg and McNeill (2010)
Reflective questions
- Of the Heron categories set out above note which interventions you feel are most helpful and which you may be resistant to.
- How could the alliance with your supervisor progress to asking for a balance of these interventions including ones you may find difficult?
- Think of different situations over the last month, did you need or desire different supports for them (e.g. direct advice, questions, encouragement)?
- What situations required which kind of support?