# Supervision and line management in care

*The conversation that changes practice, and the one everybody avoids until it becomes a disciplinary.*

## Production summary

- Modules to record: 2
- Total script: 1092 words, about 7 minutes of finished audio
- Voices: Amara (host) and Nadia (practice educator)
- Level: New and aspiring seniors, team leaders and deputies

## Accreditation wording that must appear in the description

- **The CPD Certification Service** (planned): Application scheduled.
- **Skills for Care** (aligned): Mapped to the published supervision and manager development guidance. Our own mapping, no endorsement implied.

> Do not upgrade any of these words in a description or a thumbnail. Aligned is not accredited, and planned is not approved.


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## Supervision that produces a decision

**Runtime** about 3 minutes. **Words** 509. **Starts at** 00:00 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- Structure a supervision session so it produces actions rather than a record
- Use the four functions of supervision deliberately
- Give feedback about behaviour, not character
- Record supervision so it evidences Regulation 18

### Script


`[CUE 1]` *Four functions of supervision as four quadrants, one lighting up.*

**AMARA**  [00:00]
I have had supervision for six years and I could not tell you what it is for.

**NADIA**  [00:06]
Which is the whole problem, and it is not your fault. Supervision has four functions, and if nobody names which one you are doing, the session drifts into whichever felt most urgent that morning.

**AMARA**  [00:20]
What are the four?

**NADIA**  [00:22]
Management: is the work being done safely and to standard. Development: what are you learning and where are you going. Support: how are you, given what this job asks of people. And mediation: what is going on between you and the team.

**AMARA**  [00:38]
And they get mixed up.


`[CUE 2]` *The drift: a development session sliding into a performance review.*

**NADIA**  [00:40]
Constantly. Somebody sits down expecting a development conversation and forty minutes later they have been performance managed without warning. That is how trust dies in a service, and it usually was not intended.

**AMARA**  [00:54]
So what do I do?

**NADIA**  [00:56]
Name it at the start. Today is mostly development, and we will spend ten minutes on how you are. One sentence, and everybody knows what room they are in.

**AMARA**  [01:07]
Give me a structure. I have forty five minutes and a floor to get back to.

**NADIA**  [01:14]
Both of you bring three things written down. Something that went well and why. Something that unsettled you. One thing you need.


`[CUE 3]` *Prepared supervision: three written lines from each person.*

**AMARA**  [01:22]
Both of us?

**NADIA**  [01:24]
Both. A supervisor who arrives with nothing prepared is asking somebody to be reflective at them for an hour, and it shows.

**AMARA**  [01:32]
Then what?

**NADIA**  [01:33]
Last time's actions first. Always first.

**AMARA**  [01:36]
Why first?


`[CUE 4]` *Last time's actions revisited first, with unfollowed actions shown decaying.*

**NADIA**  [01:36]
Because a supervision that never revisits its own actions teaches everybody that the actions are decorative. Do that twice and nobody will ever take an action seriously again. Then today's function, then caseload, then wellbeing asked properly, then actions with a name and a date on each.

**AMARA**  [01:55]
Right. The bit I am worst at. Feedback.

**NADIA**  [01:58]
Then one rule fixes most of it. Behaviour, never character.

**AMARA**  [02:02]
Example.

**NADIA**  [02:03]
You are careless. That is an insult with a job title attached, and there is nothing anybody can do with it. Now: the MAR chart had three gaps on Tuesday.


`[CUE 5]` *Character feedback provoking defence, beside behaviour feedback inviting explanation.*

**AMARA**  [02:15]
One of those I could act on tomorrow.

**NADIA**  [02:18]
And notice what else happens. Character feedback provokes defence, because you have attacked who somebody is. Behaviour feedback invites an explanation.

**AMARA**  [02:26]
And the explanation is usually the thing I needed.

**NADIA**  [02:30]
Almost always. She was covering two floors. Nobody ever showed her. Or she genuinely cannot read the handwriting on that chart, and now you have found a systems problem instead of a person problem.

**AMARA**  [02:43]
Any technique for the moment itself?


`[CUE 6]` *A supervision record showing summary, actions, owners and dates.*

**NADIA**  [02:46]
Say what you saw. Say the effect. Then stop talking. Most managers fill the silence, and the silence is where the useful part lives.

**AMARA**  [02:55]
Last thing. Recording. How much do I write?

**NADIA**  [02:59]
Summary of what was discussed, actions with owners and dates, and anything raised about safety or wellbeing. Both of you acknowledge it.

**AMARA**  [03:07]
And if somebody tells me something personal?

**NADIA**  [03:10]
Record that support was discussed and what was agreed. Not the detail. A supervision record is not a confidential file, and staff work that out fast if you write down their divorce.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Regulation 18: Staffing, Care Quality Commission
- Effective supervision in adult social care, Skills for Care
- Providing effective supervision, Social Care Institute for Excellence

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## The conversation you have been avoiding

**Runtime** about 4 minutes. **Words** 583. **Starts at** 03:23 in the full course recording.

### Learning outcomes to state on camera

- Raise a performance concern early and proportionately
- Separate a conduct issue from a capability, health or safeguarding issue
- Structure a difficult conversation so it stays a conversation
- Know when informal ends and a formal process must begin

### Script


`[CUE 1]` *Timeline: concern noticed in week one, raised in month eight, with resentment building.*

**AMARA**  [03:23]
I have a staff member whose recording has been sloppy for months and I have said nothing.

**NADIA**  [03:30]
Then let us start with why that is the problem, rather than the conversation being difficult.

**AMARA**  [03:36]
Go on.

**NADIA**  [03:37]
Almost every disciplinary that goes badly began as a conversation somebody did not have six months earlier. You noticed. You hoped it would settle. You said nothing. And quietly you got resentful.

**AMARA**  [03:50]
That is uncomfortably accurate.


`[CUE 2]` *Four routes diverging: conduct, capability, health, safeguarding.*

**NADIA**  [03:52]
And eventually it comes out at volume, during something unrelated. By which point her honest position is that nobody ever told her.

**AMARA**  [04:00]
And she would be right.

**NADIA**  [04:02]
She would be right, and at a tribunal it looks exactly like what it is. A concern raised in week one is feedback. The same concern in month eight is an ambush.

**AMARA**  [04:15]
Before I have it, is there anything I should work out first?

**NADIA**  [04:20]
Yes, and this is the thing new managers get wrong most expensively. Which of four things is this? Conduct, capability, health or safeguarding.


`[CUE 3]` *Disability related performance treated as conduct, flagged as discrimination.*

**AMARA**  [04:29]
Tell them apart.

**NADIA**  [04:30]
Conduct is will not. Lateness with no reason, rudeness, not following a procedure she knows perfectly well. That is the disciplinary route.

**AMARA**  [04:39]
Capability?

**NADIA**  [04:40]
Cannot, despite trying. That is support, training, a proper improvement plan. Punishing somebody for not being able to do something is both unfair and ineffective.

**AMARA**  [04:50]
And health?


`[CUE 4]` *Safeguarding referral and disciplinary process running in parallel, not in sequence.*

**NADIA**  [04:50]
Capability with a medical cause, and it may engage the Equality Act duty to make reasonable adjustments. Treat a disability related performance issue as misconduct and you are not managing, you are discriminating.

**AMARA**  [05:04]
And the fourth.

**NADIA**  [05:05]
Safeguarding. If a person using your service has been harmed or could be, this stops being an HR matter. It goes down the safeguarding route immediately.

**AMARA**  [05:15]
Even if I am mid disciplinary?

**NADIA**  [05:18]
Especially then. They run in parallel. Waiting for a disciplinary outcome before making a safeguarding referral is one of the most serious errors a manager can make, and it appears in serious case reviews regularly.


`[CUE 5]` *Conversation structure: observation, effect, question, listen, agree, follow up.*

**AMARA**  [05:32]
Right. The conversation itself. How do I open it?

**NADIA**  [05:35]
With the actual thing. I want to talk about the medication round on Tuesday. Not five minutes of weather and then an ambush, which is what most people do because they are nervous.

**AMARA**  [05:48]
Then?

**NADIA**  [05:49]
What you saw, and its effect. Then ask what is happening here, and mean it. Then listen without preparing your reply.

**AMARA**  [05:57]
Why does that matter so much?


`[CUE 6]` *ACAS Code steps with the 25 per cent uplift attached to skipping them.*

**NADIA**  [06:00]
Because the answer very often changes what the conversation is about. You went in about recording and you come out having discovered she is covering two floors, or she has a diagnosis she has not told you about, or she is caring for a parent.

**AMARA**  [06:18]
And then?

**NADIA**  [06:18]
Agree what changes, by when, and how you will both know it has. Write it down, give her a copy, and then follow it up on the date you agreed. That last part is the one everybody skips, and it is the one that decides whether anything changes.

**AMARA**  [06:38]
When does informal have to stop?

**NADIA**  [06:40]
When it continues after a clear informal conversation, when it is too serious for informal handling, or when there is a safeguarding concern. Then you follow the ACAS Code.

**AMARA**  [06:52]
Does that matter legally?

**NADIA**  [06:53]
Very much. An unreasonable failure to follow the ACAS Code can increase a tribunal award by up to twenty five per cent. Investigate, put the allegations in writing, allow her to be accompanied, hold the hearing, decide, and give a right of appeal. Skip a step and you can be entirely right about the facts and still lose.

### Sources for the on screen credit

- Code of Practice on disciplinary and grievance procedures, ACAS
- Equality Act 2010, reasonable adjustments, legislation.gov.uk
- Managing performance in adult social care, Skills for Care
- Care Act 2014 statutory guidance, chapter 14, Department of Health and Social Care

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