Premobile bruising, kinship networks and further evidence of the impacts of COVID-19

As per a prior editorial decision, we have prioritised allocating articles with an explicit and significant COVID-19 theme to an issue of the journal. Accordingly, we start this edition with Sue Connell’s study of child and family social workers' experiences in a London Local Authority accessing social work supervision between March 2020 and January 2021, during the pandemic. Twenty-two respondents filled out a survey regarding their experiences, and eight took part in semi-structured interviews on their experiences. The findings suggested that there were, in fact, marked advantages to online supervision for supervisees in this period including a sense of managerial investment in supervision, and the lesser likelihood of a supervisor being called away from supervision due to other responsibilities. While it appeared that case management predominated within discussions, opportunities for learning and development were also in evidence within online supervision. There were also challenges in that some supervisees felt less well emotionally held compared to in-person interaction, and there were some issues relating to the confidentiality of online supervision discussions due to the physical environments in which it occurred. Our second article on a COVID-19 them is Lia Ara ujo, Sofia Fontoura, Xos e Manuel Cid-Fern andez, and Liliana Sousa’s highly interesting study of the photovoice reports of 12 social workers working within settings for older adults in Portugal in the first year of the pandemic. In the study the social workers shared the photos they had taken, and associated narratives, in a group discussion. The group discussion was then analysed. The findings illustrate how the social workers had experienced “forced growth,” developing personally and professionally in response to the enforced context of an unprecedented health crisis.