Abstract
Supervision practice in social work is understood as the mainstay of the profession. However, various studies have pointed to the inadequacies of supervision to facilitate quality service provision. The collected data reflects a general misalignment between the approach to supervision practice and social work practice approaches as one inadequacy leading to the failure of supervision practice. Although there are numerous supervision models in the profession, some of which are aligned to certain practice approaches, none is directly identifiable with the social development approach, which should be at the core of a social work orientation in South Africa. Thus, in this article I provide a process model of supervision in social work that aims to establish a dialectical relationship between supervision and social development practice approach. The model is an output of a qualitative study with principles of a phenomenological design. In the study I employed a Research and Design approach to conduct individual interviews and focus group with social workers and social work supervisors, and their comments suggested the need for a social development approach to supervision.