Lawrence Shulman is a well-known expert on research, practice, and teaching in the field of clinical social
work supervision and a contributor to the last three editions of the Encyclopedia of Social Work. His newly revised
3rd edition of Interactional Supervision gives ample attention to the practical, day-to-day problems encountered
by clinical supervisors and is particularly useful in fields such as child welfare, where frontline workers are
less likely to have formal social work education.
The book is written in a conversational mode and is designed to be easy for students in supervision courses and
for new and experienced supervisors. Along with numerous examples from 'real-life' supervision and a thorough explication
of a work-phase model of supervision, the new edition includes:
* In-depth discussion and illustrations of the practice content of supervision
* Supervision of evidence-based practices
* Ethical issues, changing legislation, and risk assessment strategies
* Group leadership, group supervision, and the impact of traumatic events, i.e., 9/11
Shulman notes that most social work supervisors describe making the transition from frontline worker to supervisor
as a very difficult process in which they received very little support. Many of the books on clinical supervision
lack specific examples of individual and group supervision. To address this paucity of examples in the literature,
Shulman, in the introductory chapter of the book, outlines some of the experiences that have been drawn from participant
presentations at supervision workshops, including the following:
After six years of frontline work with a large welfare agency, a worker was promoted on the retirement of the previous
supervisor. On the first Monday morning in her new role, she walked into the common room for coffee and her former
peers became quiet. Two of them had also applied for the supervisory job and were upset that they didn't get it.
She knew they were talking about her because she used to talk about the former supervisor with them. She wondered
if this meant the end of her friendship with them.
Finally, Interactional Supervision, 3rd Edition, argues for what Shulman calls 'the parallel process,' where supervisors
model in their interactions with frontline workers the manner in which the staff should ideally interact with clients,
an approach that is well documented in scholarly research.
NASW Press
NASW Press, a division of National Association of Social Workers (NASW), is a leading scholarly press in the social
sciences. We serve faculty, practitioners, agencies, libraries, clinicians, and researchers throughout the United
States and abroad.
Known for attracting expert authors, the NASW Press delivers professional information to hundreds of thousands
of readers through its scholarly journals, books, and reference works.
Some of the areas we publish in include:
-Social work in the field of aging
-Models of social work
-Social work with children and adolescents
-Ethics in social work
-Community organization
-Professional development
