Ana Caras

The Role of Supervision in Professional Development of Social Work Specialists

The professionals use social services supervision as an educational and administrative process, meant to support. Supervision is a relatively new field introduced in the Romanian social welfare institutions. The article approaches the role of supervision in the process of professional development of social workers, following a research based on Grounded theory. We conducted this research into an elite NGO, in the North-Eastern Romania, in the domain of child protection. Supervision is a social practice based on the relationship between a person with extensive professional experience and a professional effectively involved in case management. Supervision is seen as a prerequisite to quality social services organization. Effectiveness of the supervision process may be an indicator of the quality of social work practice in an organization. The data were collected through interviews of participants in the research. The interviewed subjects operate with a definition of the supervision as being a practice based on individual or group interview, formal or informal, consisting in a series of specific phases (initial, development, end). Supervision involves the establishment of professional relationships between the participants and the quality of services and training received. This definition is partially different from those in the literature.

Review of the volume Applied Social Sciences: Sociology, edited by Patricia-Luciana Runcan, Georgeta Rata and Mihai-Bogdan Iovu, published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2013

The present paper aims at presenting the main ideas of the volume Applied Social Sciences: Sociology, appeared as a result of the International Conference of Applied Sciences, which emerged as a multidisciplinary forum. The volume structured in 6 chapters exposes gradually themes such as culture and identity, emigration and immigration, school organisation and educational opportunities, vulnerable people, groups and populations, communication and social relations and perceptions, attitudes, values, all those aspects being treated in a sociological context.