CQC and Supervision

This week, we thought as we have just released our supervision module that it would be natural to talk about supervision.  If you have not seen our free course, do check it out and share with your colleagues.

Supervision is Module 3 in Lead to Succeed and is always well received; my personal favourite being the section on active listening.

One of the things we talk about in Module 5 “Leading and Managing the Inspection Process” is “practising confidence” with staff, because we want them to answer the questions that CQC ask of them, with confidence (obviously).  There are many ways to do this and perhaps we will talk about some of them in future posts, but I really want to focus on how we can use supervision to increase the confidence of staff.  We all know that, if staff are confident, it will be reflected in their practice, how they deal with situations and therefore the lives of the people we support.

When CQC Asks…

The first step towards “practising confidence” is to make sure staff know that CQC will ask them questions (when they resume full inspections) and the second step is making sure that staff know it is okay to tell CQC that they don’t know!  I know it sounds scary, but the vital piece of the jigsaw is this: “I don’t know, BUT I know where to find out!”

One alternative might be: “I don’t know, but I know who does”, or another might be: “I don’t know but I know where the One Drawer Inspection Kit is”.  However, the last thing we want staff saying is that they “don’t know when they last had supervision”, in answer to a staple CQC question, so let’s have a brief look at different types of supervision.

Formal

The one we are all familiar with, where we have a supervision agenda, linked to a supervision contract and it happens regularly.

Group Supervision

If staff don’t see team meetings as a version of supervision, then it’s probably worth having a team meeting on exactly that subject, to make sure they do…

Informal Supervision

Similarly, staff are unlikely to think of the chat you had whilst making a cuppa as “supervision”.

Anything that supports: (there are more covered in the free course)

There is a great slide in Module 3 of Lead to Succeed that says:

‘Supervision is primarily concerned with sharing, showing and giving support, confidence-building, reflecting on practice, assisting in skills, and learning and providing the necessary information to help another person to make progress and feel comfortable in their work.’

(Taken from the Skills for Care Effective Supervision Guide, 2016)

But, look at the words Skills for Care have used: “sharing, showing, giving support, confidence building, reflecting, assisting, learning and progress(ion)”.  So, anything that facilitates and supports a worker’s confidence to do their job could be considered as a supervision.

So, the next time CQC asks a member of staff: “when did you last have supervision?”

Coach them to say: (something along the lines of)

Do you mean when did my manager last support me in my role and help me to reflect on my practice, or share an issue or discuss an idea to improve our service?  We do that all the time!