ABSTRACT
This chapter will provide a brief overview of relevant literature on support and supervision, drawing on texts from the counselling, health, youth and social work fields. It will also refer to the small but growing literature on support and supervision from the author's professional background of career guidance and counselling. The prime purpose of this chapter will be to investigate the function of support and supervision. It will make use of the findings from a recent research study that explored views about the purpose of support and supervision from the perspectives of the groups involved. This discussion on function will also outline the two main methodological approaches for supervision, i.e. one-to-one and group supervision. The chapter will conclude that for models of supervision to be effective, debates about purpose and meaning need to be placed in the foreground of initial and ongoing development of the practice.
