ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the broad processes that constitute rhetorical presentation in a welfare setting, with a specific regard to supervisory encounters. In order to demonstrate the complex elements that make up the supervisory encounter it will be necessary to submit taped verbatim extracts of case talk between team leaders and social workers. The interview extracts that follow are necessarily a minor selection of taped supervisory discussions about young people living at home with their families, but subject to a statutory relationship with the social services department. The family provides the unit of discussion and is unpacked through a description of family attitudes, relationships and behaviour. The team leader recovers the full relevance of the worker’s attention to service ideals because the account ‘proves’ the worker has established a relationship that reveals varied and intimate detail of client lives. The worker proceeds through family networks, relationships, biographies and behaviours.
