I came into youth work as a young person myself, growing up in eastern Germany. At 15, I became a young leader for the junior group of an after-school provision.
Youth work is an incredible privilege, but it’s also heavy work. Youth workers hold complex stories, pressures and emotions. Supervision gives workers somewhere to put that complexity down, look at it carefully, and be supported to decide what happens next. It includes assessment and aligning with standards: safeguarding, GDPR, lone working policies, targets and boundaries. But at its heart, supervision is about support, trust and learning — creating space for workers to grow.
Buildings, resources and funding matter, but the key resource is the youth worker. To better support young people, we have to look at ourselves and remain professionally curious. Ask yourself how does my story influence my response? What blind spots do I have? Am I overreacting or under-reacting because of my own experience?
Susann Haehnel,
Academy Team Leader
Good supervision gives workers space to explore a situation, rather than jumping to conclusions based on what they have experienced before or what they assume must be happening.
I was working as a youth worker while at university, and one of my placements was an Oxford housing estate where the young people’s world felt miles away, both geographically and culturally, from the city centre. My manager, who had lived there for 20 years, helped me understand the families, histories and tensions. Through supervision, he helped me get under the skin of it and understand community through relationships.
I have seen supervision protect staff from holding too much alone. In one role, we supported a young person affected by bereavement, issues around identity and belonging, difficulties attending school and trauma. My colleague kept trying different approaches: getting her out of the house, advocating with school, supporting her grandmother, and moving her towards therapeutic support. In supervision, we asked: what else can we try? Where are our boundaries? When do we help her access someone who can hold the trauma she needs to process?
Supervision gives youth workers a place to identify risks, develop a plan of action to manage those risks safely, and identify what they can hold, when to keep going, and when to escalate or involve other specialists.
Sometimes it can help a youth worker grow their resilience so they can hold risk safely, without the burden overwhelming them. That is why supervision extends beyond monthly meetings. Youth workers may need a quick debrief after a difficult visit, a ten-minute call from the car, or a check-in before the weekend, so they are not left carrying a young person’s situation alone.
If organisations want supervision to be valued, leaders have to fiercely protect the time. If internal supervision is not possible, explore external mentoring or peer supervision, while still recognising the value of dedicated support from your manager.
Training and CPD
Often in youth work, we get promoted because we’re good at working with young people – but we don’t necessarily get the training to supervise and lead teams. The Academy’s advanced CPD course on Supervising Youth Workers: Building Culturally Competent, Reflective, and Effective Teams is a useful starting point for youth workers and supervisors who want to understand what good supervision looks like, why it matters, and how it supports reflective practice, safer decision-making and staff wellbeing.
For those moving into leadership or management, the Level 4 Certificate in Professional Development (Youth Work Leadership and Management) explores supervision models, tools and approaches in more depth, including how different settings may require different styles of support.
Investing in supervision skills is not just investing in yourself, it is investing in your team. My advice is simple: make the most of supervision, ask for what you need, and be open to learn and be challenged.
