Workshop at Building practice supervision in learning organisations: Partnership Conference.

1. Improving child care social work:
the contribution of a cognitive and
affective supervision model
Prof. Gillian Ruch
Professor of Social Work, University of Sussex
1

2. Improving child care social work:
The contribution of a cognitive and affective
supervision model
Prof Gillian Ruch, University of Sussex
Prof Danielle Turney, Queens’ University Belfast
Research in Practice
February 2019

3. The contemporary context of child care social work
Recurrent shortcomings in practice
Concern that ‘the balance between following rules and
exercising professional expertise has become skewed’
(Munro, 2011:87)
Research findings: the fragmentation and sanitisation of
practice (Broadhurst et al, 2010; Hall et al, 2010; Peckover,
2008; Shaw et al, 2009)
Supervision: colonised by ‘new public management’

4. Cognitive Interviewing: an outline
• Covers a range of activities and techniques:
The cognitive interview “admits to a wide variety of forms of
interviews, from structured tasks that probe problem solving
strategies to situations in which individuals report personal
experiences or their recollections of unplanned event”
(Solano-Flores and Li, 2009: 10)
• All draw on cognitive psychological insights into information
retrieval, memory and communication

5. 4‘mnemonics’to aid info retrieval
• Mentally re-instating the environmental and personal
context
• Reporting everything, even partial information, without
editing
• Recounting the events in different order
• Reporting the events from different perspectives (Geiselman et
al, 1986)

6. Cognitive Interviewing and social work
• Some use of forensic interviewing with child witnesses or
victims of abuse
• Majority of work appears to have been undertaken in US
• Very little consideration of CI in relation to social work in UK
- Westcott (1992) addressed potential relevance of CI in
child protection investigations
• Not previously considered explicitly in relation to social
workers’ experiences

7. Using CI to support practice
• Bringing CI into supervision - challenges and opportunities
• Enhancing the quality of the information that underpins
social work assessment and decision making
• Acknowledging cognitive and affective responses
• Promoting effective practice

8. Using CI to support practice
• Offering a space where the thoughts and feelings about a
case could be given equal attention
• Equally privileging ‘event information’ and ‘emotion
information’
• Minimising the potential for ‘attacks on linking’ (Bion, 1959)
• Conceptualising the supervisory space as a place of
containment with the supervisor acting as the container

9. Challenges: contextual
• Building and sustaining the collaboration for a genuine
knowledge exchange
• Introducing innovation in a situation of continuing change
• Keeping ‘research mindedness’ alive in settings
characterised by anxiety and conditions of austerity

10. Challenges: conceptual and practical
• Active listening vs problem solving
• Attacks on linking and holding a depressive position
• Turning a blind eye and the costs of ‘not seeing’
• Thinking the unthinkable
• Integrated doing-thinking-feeling-listening

11. References
• Bion, W. (1962) Learning from Experience, London, Heinemann
• Broadhurst, K., Hall, C., Wastell, D., White, S. and Pithouse, A.
(2010) ‘Risk, instrumentalism and the humane project in social
work: Identifying the informal logics of risk management in
children’s statutory services’, British Journal of Social Work, 40,
pp.352-370
• Geiselman, R. E., Fisher, R. P., MacKinnon, D. P., & Holland, H. L.
(1986) Enhancement of eyewitness memory with the cognitive
interview. The American Journal of Psychology, 99, 3, pp.385-401
• Hall, C., Parton, N. and White, S. (2010) Child-Centric Information
and Communication Technology (ICT) and the Fragmentation of
Child Welfare Practice in England, Journal of Social Policy, 39, 3,
pp. 393-413
• Munro, E. (2011) The Munro Review of Child Protection Final
Report: A Child Centred System, London, The Stationery Office

12. References (contd.)
• Peckover, S., White, S. and Hall, C. (2008) ‘Making and
managing electronic children: E assessment in child welfare’
Information, Communication and Society, vol. 11, 3, 275-94
• Shaw, I., Bell, M., Sinclair, I., Sloper, P., Mitchell, W., Dyson,
P., Clayden, J. and Rafferty, J. (2009) ‘An Exemplary Scheme?
An Evaluation of the Integrated Children’s System’, British
Journal of Social Work 39, 4, 613–26
• Solanos-Flores, G. and Li, M. (2009) Generalizability of
cognitive interview-based measures across cultural groups.
Educational Measurement: Issues and Practice, 28, 2, pp.9-
18
• Westcott, H. (1992) The Cognitive Interview – a useful tool
for social workers? British Journal of Social Work, 22,
pp.519-633