Book Review:

A Practical Guide to Transformative Supervision for the helping Professions

Written by Nicki Weld

I’m sure if you work with kids or their parents you have lots of books on your shelf just like I do. The books you wouldn’t be without and couldn’t put down and the books that you didn’t quite connect with.

I’m often asked to recommend books by the practitioners I supervise and train so I decided to put together some of my past book reviews. I’ve got many other titles related to working therapeutically with children I can share with you, both practical and theoretical so look out for more reviews from me.

If you’ve read any of the books I’ve reviewed on this page or have book recommendations of your own please leave a comment. I’d love to hear from you.

A practical guide to transformative supervision for the helping professions is a well written and thoroughly researched book by Nicki Weld who is social work professional leader in New Zealand. Ms Weld is clearly passionate about her subject and openly declares her motivation behind exploring transformative change as a function of supervision. She sees her life purpose as fundamentally about supporting the development of awareness, knowledge and self actualisation.

There were a number of things that I particularly appreciated about the book. I whole heartedly agreed with the notion of supervision as a transformative process. I enjoyed the discussion around emotional literacy, the importance of openness in the supervisory process and the very practical suggestions with regard to applying our observations. Ms Weld also used personal examples to illustrate various points and to highlight the ways that she had herself learnt from various interactions with her own supervisees. However, there are points where the content strayed from the practical and became rather philosophical for example the chapter on global influences. Some readers will find the more theoretical content very stimulating but I would have  been happier if the book had stayed with the practical theme throughout, particularly as that is what the title promises. Written with both social work and counselling supervision in mind the political content may be more accessible to some groups than to others. I also think the relevance of the book will depend on where a supervisor is in their journey of experience and how well it matches with their current concept of supervision. I found there were times when I really had to stop to think how effective supervision could be anything other than transformative. I think this says a lot about where I am in my journey as a supervisor.

I would suggest this book might be most useful to supervisors who have already achieved a level of conscious competence and are at the stage of integrating a transformative way of being into their supervisory and therapeutic work. Overall, I believe this to be a valuable book for the further development of supervision for the helping professions.

Mo Perkins, Integrative Psychotherapist and Supervisor in Private Practice.