PSDP – Resources and Tools for Managers of Practice Supervisors This website contains open access resources and tools to support managers in child and family social work who are responsible for supervising practice supervisors. These resources have been developed as part of a new PSDP-led programme for managers of practice supervisors called PSDP: Supervising the Supervisor. Welcome Being a middle leader in children’s social care is a challenging role. You have responsibility for strategic development and quality assurance in relation to aspects of service delivery and performance. However, you are also likely to line manage and supervise practice supervisors, who themselves supervise and oversee the practice of qualified social workers working with children and families. Following on from the success of the Practice Supervisor Development Programme, the Department for Education commissioned a new programme. The PSDP: Supervising the Supervisor programme will support managers of practice supervisors to promote a reflective, curious, analytical and emotionally containing approach to supervision, both within the organisation and for the practice supervisors they line manage.The resources and tools in this section of the website are inspired by this new programme. They are designed to support learning and development for all managers of practice supervisors in children’s social care, regardless of experience or the length of time in role. These materials are informed by the Knowledge and skills statement (KSS) for practice leaders and, where relevant, the Post-qualifying standard: knowledge and skills statement for child and family practice supervisors. While the focus is on child and family social work, much of the content will also be relevant for managers working in other social care contexts. A congruent approach to support and supervision across all levels of an organisation helps foster a reflective culture which can engage with emotions and with complexity.Patterson, 2019 The learning resources are organised into five key themes: Enabling a learning organisation Find out more Promoting a positive supervision culture Find out more Building a trauma-attuned and socially just organisational system Trauma attuned system Influencing up and across: the middle leadership challenge The middle leadership challenge Your development as a middle leader Find out more In each section you will find a mixture of knowledge briefings, presentations, films and learning tools. The materials draw on research and practice evidence, as well as learning from the lived experience of children and families, to support managers of practice supervisors promote a positive culture of supervision within their organisation. Learning tools can be used to review and audit your skills (for example by reflecting on your approach to leadership) or support you to consider how you can influence supervision in a certain area (for example, embedding observations of supervision). Knowledge briefings have a more strategic focus and have been developed to support you in building an organisational culture in which practice supervisors, practitioners and excellent standards of social work practice can thrive. Please feel free to access the resources in any order you wish. We hope that you find them useful. Please also remember to take a look the PSDP- Resources and Tools for Practice Supervisors section of this open access website which contains over one hundred resources written specifically for practice supervisors. Many of which focus on ways in which you can develop skills and confidence in providing reflective, curious and emotionally containing supervision as a line manager. If you provide supervision to practice supervisors as part of your role, then many of these resources will also be relevant to you. Please share your thoughts and learning with us on Twitter using the hashtag #PSDP Film – Practice supervisors who have done PSDP reflect on how they would like line managers to support them in role Please take a look at this short film before you start to explore the website. In it, three practice supervisors who have completed PSDP talk about the kind of support they would like to receive from their own line managers. The film was developed for the PSDP: Supervising the Supervisor programme and practice supervisors were asked to answer the question: ‘If a manager came on a PSDP: Supervising the Supervisor course and it was a great success, what would their team notice about them when they came back to work? Their responses reveal how important you are in ensuring practice supervisors receive regular opportunities for reflective and containing discussions in supervision, so that they can provide a similar supervision experience for social workers.