Stages of the historical development of process supervision in BiH

Historical development of process supervision in the social protection system in BiH - Stages of the historical development of process supervision in BiH

Supervision in BiH comes with post-war, international support to the social protection system, within the engagements and activities undertaken in the organization of the Swedish international organizations SWEBiH and SIDA. In this process, it is possible to single out four specific, significant stages of development:

1) Introduction of the concept of supervision in the social protection system, the first education for supervision and the first book on supervision

This is the first phase of development, which is related to the first recognition of the need for supervision in BiH. It is marked by two important events, both held in Tuzla at the end of the 20th century. The first refers to a short training on medical supervision, which was held by Liljana Kaleb and thus was the first "representative" of the idea of ​​supervision in BiH.

The second event is based on the cooperation of the Swedish International Organization SWEBiH (Swedish Psychiatric, Social and Rehabilitation Project for Bosnia and Herzegovina), the Department of Social Work of the University of Gothenburg and the Department of Social Work of the University of Stockholm, to support the development of social protection in BiH.

At the initiative of SWEBiH, a meeting was held in 1998, attended by Lilja Cajvert, as a representative of the Department of Social Work at the University of Gothenburg, representatives of the University of Sarajevo, the Association of Social Workers of Tuzla Canton and the Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Tuzla Canton. The idea was to determine within the international project, led by SWEBiH, what is most needed to help develop the social protection system and support social workers in BiH in general. Lilja Cajvert first presents supervision and then explains her role in supporting social workers. Until then, as far as is known, there was no mention of supervision in social work and social protection.

As a result of the initiative launched from this meeting, we can single out two central activities:

1. First education on supervision (1998-2000),
2. The first legal solutions recognizing the possibility of providing supervisory support (Law on Social Protection, Protection of Civilian Victims of War and Protection of Families with Children of Tuzla Canton, 2000; Law on Social Protection of Sarajevo Canton, No. 16/02).
3. The first literature on supervision in the local language.

The first training on supervision was organized in cooperation with the Department of Social Work of the University of Gothenburg, the Department of Social Work of the University of Stockholm and the Department of Social Work of the University of Sarajevo (Kljajić, in Cajvert, 2001). The curriculum was harmonized with the program of education for supervision at the Department of Social Work of the University of Gothenburg and led and implemented by professors from the Gothenburg Department of Social Work. The training included a total of 17 participants, social workers with higher or higher education, from Tuzla and Sarajevo. It lasted for two years, the educational program, in addition to lectures, including the obligatory 44 hours of supervision based on personal experience, and 112 hours of supervision by a supervisor. This program, which was completed in 2000, produced 17 social workers with a diploma of completed education for a supervisor, issued by the University of Gothenburg, Faculty of Social Work. It did not result, at that socio-historical moment in itself, in any significant progress in the development of supervisory practice in BiH. Only a few educated, certified supervisors, sporadically and rarely, try to implement the supervisory practice in the social protection system in BiH or NGOs dealing with social problems after completing the training.

It is a common course of development of supervision in other countries as well, that the recognition of the need for supervision starts from the practitioner, and not to be imposed from the institutional level. It took time for the process of sensitization of the professional and expert community for supervision in social work in BiH. Therefore, this first training for supervisors, in itself, did not have the strength to produce significant changes in relation to the implementation of supervision in the social protection system in BiH. This is especially supported by the fact that the teaching staff of no university from BiH was involved in this education. The absence of professors from domestic departments for social work, who would understand the importance and possibilities of supervision as part of the education process, resulted in the absence of forces from the academic community in the fight for the implementation of supervision in BiH. In any case, subsequently, this first, successfully completed training for supervisors will contribute to the development of supervision in BiH, by enabling the acceptance of the Association of Supervisors in BiH as a full member of the International Association of European Supervisors (ANSE).

The first legal basis for the implementation of supervision is related to the Law on Social Protection, Protection of Civilian Victims of War and Families with Children of Tuzla Canton, adopted in 2000, as part of this first "wave of supervision" in BiH. Although it recognizes supervision only as a possibility, not a duty.

The end result of the cooperation between the Department of Social Work of the University of Gothenburg, the Department of Social Work of the University of Stockholm, the Department of Social Work of the University of Sarajevo and SWEBiH is the first book on supervision in the mother tongue (Kljajić, in Cajvert, 2001). It is a book called "Creative space of therapists - about supervision", author Lilja Cajvert, which was published in 2001 in Sarajevo. The author is a supervisor and leader of the first education for supervisors in BiH, completed a year earlier, with already rich experience of teaching and training for supervisors, conducting supervisory practice and writing about supervision. In this way, the foundations are created for the first study of supervision at universities in BiH, in 2004 as part of a compulsory course in the fourth year of study of social work students, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Banja Luka. In addition, with the first literature on supervision in the domestic language, this form of professional support is approaching its potential beneficiaries - social workers, interested managers in the social protection system, as well as all other professionals in helping professions.

2) Introduction of supervision in the formal education of social workers and the first literature on supervision in the mother tongue

In cooperation with the University of Stockholm and the University of Gothenburg, and funded and managed by the international organizations SWEBiH and SIDA, the Department of Social Work was opened at the Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Banja Luka in 2000. This is the first formal education of social workers in RS. Even then, within the curriculum, supervision is introduced as a compulsory subject in the fourth year of study. Later, the introduction of supervision in the curriculum of social work education was followed by other Departments of Social Work in BiH (University of Sarajevo: supervision introduced as an elective subject in undergraduate studies in 2010; University of Tuzla: supervision introduced as an elective subject in undergraduate study). study in 2008).

Although seemingly without influencing the development of supervisory practice, in this way supervision is presented to social work students, future social workers, who will later bring the “story of supervision” to the social welfare institutions where they will work. As it will be shown later, it took almost two decades for these students, as social workers, to raise the “story of supervision” to the formal level of public discussions, organized by the Association of Social / Professional Workers. Of course, this by no means means that the need for supervision was recognized only by those who were familiar with it within the framework of formal education. We just want to emphasize what is self-evident - in order to develop the awareness of social workers about the need for supervisory support, they first had to be familiar with what supervision is and what it can offer.

3) Master's studies on supervision in social work

The University of Gothenburg continues its leading role in the development of supervision in social protection in BiH, in cooperation with the Department of Social Work of the Faculty of Philosophy in Banja Luka, and the Department of Social Work of the Faculty of Political Sciences in Sarajevo. In addition to "domestic", numerous international professors and experts from supervision also participated in the training. The training lasted for three years, and in addition to lectures and exercises, it included the obligatory 100 hours of supervision for supervision (metasupervision), and 96 hours of leading supervision groups (Cajvert, Branković and Grbo, 2007). Some of the results of this, certainly the strongest "wave" in the development of supervision in BiH, are:

• 27 masters of supervision in social work (it is important to note here that several supervisors from the first education on supervision also completed this postgraduate study program),
• The first scientific research papers on the needs, opportunities and obstacles to the implementation of supervision in the social protection system in BiH,
• First International Conference on Management and Supervision in Social Work (Neum, 2009),
• Organizing the Association of Supervisors in BiH (Neum, 2009),
• Acceptance of the Association of Supervisors in BiH as a full member of the International Association of Supervisors and Coaches (ANSE),
• First long-term supervisory practices.

4) Recognizing the need for supervision and developing supervisory practice

Recognition of the need for supervision can be observed in relation to the legal-institutional framework, on the one hand, and the development of supervisory practice, on the other hand. In addition, we can divide it into two time periods: the first is from 2009 to 2015, and the second is from 2015 to the present.

Within the development of the legal-institutional framework, the first major “step” is the recognition of supervision in the RS Law on Social Protection (2012) as a “duty” or “obligation” for social protection institutions. In doing so, the supervision recognizes as “organized and constant professional support”, whose ultimate goal is better to practice with users. Although such a legal solution, in itself, was not enough to start a wave of development of supervisory practice in social protection institutions, it provided a legal-institutional framework in which such practice is possible. It also offered a model legal solution for the introduction of supervision, which was later followed by some of the reforms of the relevant laws in the cantonal ministries of the Federation of BiH.

Nevertheless, the Instruction for the implementation of supervision (Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of the RS, 2017), as the second big "step" in the development of the legal-institutional framework, was waited for five years. This is another example of how the true acceptance of a newspaper requires, above all, the recognition of its importance by those who need to accept it. Supervision could not (nor should it) be “imposed” by a legal solution, from the top of the hierarchical ladder in the social protection system. It was necessary for the social workers themselves to recognize the need for professional support, and the risks of professional burnout. Only then did the professional community gradually begin to recognize the importance of supervisory support in social welfare institutions, which, in the end, resulted in the development of the mentioned Instruction. At the same time, the first round tables on the topic of supervision are organized (Association of Social Workers of the Banja Luka Region, Banja Luka, 2017; and the Association of Social Workers of the Sarajevo Canton, Sarajevo, 2017). These round tables were supported and visited by representatives of relevant ministries, which is a kind of "finding" of representatives of the authorities and social workers in BiH at the same "point", and that is the need for supervisory practice in social care institutions.

At the same time, supervisory practice in BiH is developing independently of the development of the legal-institutional framework. The importance of supervision is recognized, above all, within non-governmental organizations, which have been hiring masters of supervision in social work since 2010, for continuous professional support to their employees and volunteers. These are mainly non-governmental organizations that provide psychosocial support to children and youth (Nova Generacija, Banja Luka, Narko-Ne, Sarajevo), and in both supervisions, it was provided to volunteers. This target group of supervisors is not accidental, bearing in mind that, historically, supervision has just begun to develop in working with volunteers in charities. The international organization IOM hires a supervisor for professional support to psychologists, who provided psychosocial assistance to soldiers who were discharged from military service throughout BiH (Sarajevo, 2011-2015).

In 2011, the Study Program of Social Work in Banja Luka (since 2009 at the Faculty of Political Sciences) introduced the supervision of students in fieldwork, as a mandatory part of teaching activities in the subject Practical Teaching. In addition to the above engagements, the Association of Supervisors in BiH managed to obtain financial support from the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy through project activities, to provide supervision to the centres for social work of Tuzla Canton (2011, 2013).
It is especially important to recognize the possibility of the contribution of masters of supervision in social work and in the improvement of teamwork in for-profit organizations, which do not deal with the provision of psychosocial assistance (Sarajevo, 2012, 2013). Knowledge and skills about team supervision can certainly be used effectively in improving teamwork, regardless of the profession in which the employee, or professional team, is engaged.

In this way, masters of supervision are given the opportunity to improve their supervisory skills, in the "gap" between the completion of their education and the first public competitions for the role of the supervisor in social care institutions (Public Institution Home for Orphans - Bjelave, 2015; Ministry of Health and Social Welfare Unsko -Sana Canton, Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Tuzla Canton and Ministry of Health and Social Welfare of Central Bosnia Canton, 2016).

It can be concluded that within the first time frame of this phase (2009-2015) the development of the legal-institutional framework for the implementation of supervision in the social protection system continues. At the same time, within this time period, supervisory practice is developed within the work of NGOs and international organizations, with only one exception of supervision in the centres for social work of Tuzla Canton, as part of a project activity organized by the Association of Supervisors in BiH.

It is still a time when the social protection system does not recognize supervision as a profession that can be effective in improving the quality of work and psychosocial protection of skilled workers.
Since 2015, the development of supervision in BiH has received a new "wind in the back". One of the main reasons is certainly the "maturation" of all those forces invested in the reform of the system until the consciousness of the professional community has gradually developed to the point where there is a critical mass of social and other professionals in social care institutions, who recognize the need for supervisory support. In addition, as part of the crisis intervention in Neum in 2014, about 150 directors, social workers and other professionals in the social work centers of the municipalities affected by the major floods gained experience in receiving supervision. This is the most effective way to educate helpers about supervision - through experiential learning. We believe that this direct encounter with supervisory support, such a significant group of employees in the centers for social work in BiH, also significantly accelerated the recognition of the need for supervision within the social protection system.