Effective management and supervision is essential for creating quality, culturally responsive services for families, reducing employee stress, and facilitating worker retention. Supervisors' administrative, educational, and supportive responsibilities impact practice quality and positive family outcomes.
Supervisors play a critical role in helping families thrive. By promoting strength-based, culturally responsive, and trauma-informed approaches to working with families, they can help create a supportive environment and create a more equitable child welfare system.
Supervisors also have several policy-driven requirements and responsibilities. It can be challenging to balance creating a supportive, antiracist environment and comply with policies and statutes. Blending supervision's technical and supportive components can establish an environment that truly supports families and caseworkers.
Supervisors support caseworkers by creating a safe space for them to reflect on biases, manage the secondary trauma they may experience, and provide training opportunities to continue building their skills. Positive relationships between supervisors and caseworkers can serve as a model for how caseworkers can establish a collaborative partnership with the children and families they serve.
Managers, supervisors, and administrators can use the resources below to develop effective leadership skills and build a skilled workforce.
Adjust the filters below to refine your list of resources. Can’t find what you need in the filtered results? Try searching our Library catalog to access a large selection of peer-reviewed journal articles, evaluation reports, Children’s Bureau grant materials, research studies, and more.
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Supervising for Quality Child Welfare Practice
Read an overview of child welfare supervision and learn about the dimensions of supervision that agencies may want to consider as they seek to strengthen the effectiveness of their services to children and families with examples of States' efforts.
Using a Culturally Responsive Leadership Framework: NCWWI 1-Page Summary
Learn how a culturally responsive leadership framework develops leaders who consider the context they are working in, engage others in decision-making, are aware of their own biases, and center their practice on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Emotional Intelligence for Leaders: NCWWI 1-Page Summary
Read about how strengthening supervisors' emotional intelligence helps them build relationships, maintain a positive environment, and model behaviors for fellow employees and families.
Leader-Member Exchange
Learn about leader-member exchange, which refers to the quality of relationship exchange formed between a leader and their subordinate. The quality of this relationship also has the power to influence various attitudes and behavior.
Supervision in a Virtual Workplace
Find information from the Quality Improvement Center for Workforce Development on remote supervision in child welfare and explore best practices in remote supervision.
Supportive Supervision and Resiliency
Learn more about Ohio’s Department of Job and Family Services' partnership with child welfare agencies to implement supportive supervision and resiliency interventions led to higher levels of resilience, work-life balance, and job satisfaction.