Geographic Location and Social Work Supervision in Child Welfare

Although the idea of person in the environment is a dominant paradigm in social work, the concept of environment does not emphasize the idea of geographic location. This qualitative research explores social work supervision of child welfare workers from the perspective of geographic place. Ten supervisors from urban communities and 12 supervisors from northern remote communities were interviewed to assess the challenges, strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities they associated with their work. The northern supervisors commented on a number of factors that they perceived to be different from supervision in an urban setting.