Congratulations on your new starter. With a little attention, a newly qualified social worker can last for many years.
Most of what follows costs nothing. I mention that because I know what your budget looks like.
Position
Give them a desk. If you cannot give them a desk, give them the same chair two days running.
Sit them near somebody kind who has been doing it for ten years. Not the most brilliant person in the team. The one who answers questions without sighing.
Watering
Supervision once a fortnight for the first three months, then monthly. Do not cancel it. If you have to cancel it, rebook it before they have left your office, and say why, because otherwise they will assume it is them.
Ask how they are before you ask about their cases. Then wait. They will say “fine”. Keep waiting.
Light
Let them see you not know something.
Say, in front of them, “I’m not sure. Let me think about that.” Ring somebody and ask. New workers believe that everybody else is certain, and that belief does them more harm than any caseload.
Feeding
Tell them when they have done something well, the same day, and say what it was. “Good work” is no use to anybody. “The way you waited when she went quiet” is something they can do again.
Tell them when they have got something wrong, the same day, in private, and say what it was. Then tell them one thing you got wrong in your own first year. Choose a good one.
Common problems
Drooping. Usually around month six. Give them a week off and do not ring them during it.
Working through lunch. Send them out of the building. Go with them if you have to.
Still at their desk at seven. Go and ask what they are stuck on. It is usually one form. It is sometimes not the form.
Very quiet after a visit. Put the kettle on. Do not say “do you want to talk about it?” Say “come and help me carry these”, and ask in the kitchen.
Says “I’m fine” three supervisions in a row. They are not fine.
What not to do
Do not give them the case nobody else will take because “it’ll be good experience”. It will be experience. So is falling down the stairs.
Do not tell them it was worse in your day. It may have been. It does not help.
Do not forget what it was like. You cried in a toilet once. I know you did, and I know which one.
Repotting
At the end of the year, sign them off properly. Book a room. Bring something to eat. Say out loud, to their face, what they are good at.
They have spent twelve months being assessed. Give them ten minutes of being told.
If they leave anyway
Some will, and it is not always your fault. Ask them why, and listen to the answer, and change one thing before the next one starts.
And if you have done all of the above and they stay, in five years they will be the kind person with ten years’ experience that you sit your next new starter beside. You are growing your own team. It is slow, and I do not know of another way that works.
There is a free guide for group supervision, and posters for the wall.
Maisie x
Next in the notebook: Why a novel, and not a memoir