ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the value of supervision in primary care settings by Dilys Daws, who writes about her work providing supervision and consultation in a busy inner city health centre. It proposes that good, regular supervision is essential to the organisation of effective health and mental health services in the community, but also that it is as much a skilled and delicate undertaking for those receiving supervision as for those providing it. The chapter assumes that the great majority of practitioners are 'competent' in the familiar sense of that word. The kind of supervision discussed here places the day-to-day working experience of the practitioner at the heart of the supervisory process. The organising theme of the material brought by the practitioner was conflict, conflict experienced as persecutory and disabling rather than as an emotional experience that could be named and processed.