engleski

DEVELOPMENT AND EVALUATION OF POSTGRADUATE TRAINING IN SUPERVISION IN CROATIA

Although awareness about the need for supervision in social work in Croatia has a tradition of 40 years, the supervision was introduced in social work practice only recently. The first article about supervision was published in the journal Social Work (1973) and the book Supervision in social work was published in 1977. The influence of American approach to supervision was recognizable, but emphasizing that supervision is not an administrative measure and thus not based on hierarchy and administrative structure. The contextual and political reasons for neglecting the need for supervision in social work will be discussed (Pregrad and Ajdukovic, 2003 ; Ajdukovic and Zizak, 2007). In year 2000, a group teachers from the Department of Social Work, University of Zagreb started the three year project Introducing supervision into the social welfare system in Croatia" in cooperation with the departments for social work of the University of Stockholm and University of Goteborg and financial support from Swedish International Developmental Agency (Sida) (Ajdukovic and Cajvert, 2003: Ajdukovic, 2005)). The project was based on "training of trainers" model and included: (1) advanced one year training for trainers in supervision for a group of ten professionals with significant experience in supervision but without previous systematic training and (2) training of 35 professionals for supervisors in social work. Additional project outcomes were the first university textbook in Croatian on supervision Supervision of the psychosocial work (2004). As well, the course Methods of supervision was introduced to undergraduate and later on to graduate students of social work (Ajdukovic and Urbanc, 2010). The two and half year long university Postgraduate program in supervision was designed and offered since 2006. The postgraduate program is carried out in accordance with ANSE standards for education of supervisors (www.supervison-eu.org/anse ). It is aimed for already licensed professionals in the social welfare field. The contents of the program will be presented in detail. The focus of the program is on development of supervision skills (i.e. reflections, Socratic dialog, collaborative learning) through interactive teaching and educative meta supervision of carefully planed supervision groups that are led by postgraduate students. The evaluation of the program (scale from 1 – poor to 5 – excellent) showed that participants highly evaluated experience in educative meta- supervision groups (4.8), their personal experience with planning and leading supervision groups (4.60), interactive lessons (4.6), writing of essays about dynamic of supervision group (4.3) and reading and discussing new literature in the field of supervision (43). As additional benefits of participating in the postgraduate program in supervision the students emphasize improved organization of their regular work, better insight into relations among colleagues, increased recognition of clients' needs, improved evaluation of own collaboration with clients. The program will be additionally discussed from the perspective of personal and professional growth of participants. The final part of the paper will present analysis of final research papers of postgraduate students in supervision with the focus on selection of research topics and methods, and impact of further development of the knowledge base in supervision relevant for Croatia and the South East Europe region.

supervision ; postgraduate training ; development ; evaluation

nije evidentirano