Theoretical Perspectives on the Development of Social Welfare Practice Supervision

Abstract

The article has a theoretical approach and starts from the perspective that an improved social work practice can occur from a qualitative supervision process. This article aims to emphasize the role of supervision in the professional development of the social workers, as it is described in some of the main sources from the scientific literature in the field. I brought into discussion in short the main periods of development of the social work supervision, starting with 19th century till present. The article also synthesizes what is meant by the process of supervision in social work, by taking into consideration the theoretical and practice models from international literature, by reviewing the most frequent definitions of supervision found in the literature, but also the functions of supervision. The article contains references to individual, group and peer supervision and to some supervision models.