Field Directors

Hello,

I am curious to learn how your programs are structuring supervision for your interns.  My understanding of the 2022 EPAS is only that BSW students must be supervised by someone with a BSW degree or MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience and MSW students must be supervised by someone with an MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience. CSWE does not seem to specify the modality, amount or frequency of the supervision (which I think is new to the 2022 EPAS?).  I am curious to know:

1. How have you structured the supervision requirements for your program?
2. Do all students receive the exact same type, quantity and frequency of supervision?
3. Are any of you using group supervision to meet the supervision requirement for situations where agencies do not have qualified supervisors available (i.e. we are wondering if our school can hire someone to provide group supervision weekly to students placed in settings where there are not qualified social work supervisors available. They would have agency based task supervisors for daily oversight and once a week group supervision with a qualified MSW supervisor.)
4. Is it allowable for some students to have individual supervision and others to have group supervision if that is all that is available for whatever reason.

We have been sticking to our strict (possibly self-imposed) requirement that all students receive at least 1 hour of individual supervision per week from a qualified MSW supervisor and one additional hour of "other" supervision (group, team meeting, clinical rounds, in-service, etc). but it is getting harder and harder to find enough placements with MSW supervisors willing and able to do one hour per week of individual sup for each intern and we are hoping to find other possible solutions.

Thank you so much for any info you can share!

Warmly,

Molly

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Molly Hogan-Fowler
Director of Practicum Education
Salem State University
Salem MA
978-542-2575
------------------------------

Following because I have had the same question :) 

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Tracey Eason
Practicum Coordinator
University of Alaska, Anchorage
Anchorage AK
+1 (907) 795-8960
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Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2026 08:15
From: Molly Hogan-Fowler
Subject: models of intern supervision

Hello,

I am curious to learn how your programs are structuring supervision for your interns.  My understanding of the 2022 EPAS is only that BSW students must be supervised by someone with a BSW degree or MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience and MSW students must be supervised by someone with an MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience. CSWE does not seem to specify the modality, amount or frequency of the supervision (which I think is new to the 2022 EPAS?).  I am curious to know:

1. How have you structured the supervision requirements for your program?
2. Do all students receive the exact same type, quantity and frequency of supervision?
3. Are any of you using group supervision to meet the supervision requirement for situations where agencies do not have qualified supervisors available (i.e. we are wondering if our school can hire someone to provide group supervision weekly to students placed in settings where there are not qualified social work supervisors available. They would have agency based task supervisors for daily oversight and once a week group supervision with a qualified MSW supervisor.)
4. Is it allowable for some students to have individual supervision and others to have group supervision if that is all that is available for whatever reason.

We have been sticking to our strict (possibly self-imposed) requirement that all students receive at least 1 hour of individual supervision per week from a qualified MSW supervisor and one additional hour of "other" supervision (group, team meeting, clinical rounds, in-service, etc). but it is getting harder and harder to find enough placements with MSW supervisors willing and able to do one hour per week of individual sup for each intern and we are hoping to find other possible solutions.

Thank you so much for any info you can share!

Warmly,

Molly

------------------------------
Molly Hogan-Fowler
Director of Practicum Education
Salem State University
Salem MA
978-542-2575
------------------------------

Hi Molly,

My understanding of the EPAS requirements is as you say, must receive field supervision from an MSW/BSW with 2 years post degree experience, but this does not specify the modality or frequency.

We do state the 1 hour per week as a requirement, as I find that some supervisors do a good job of adhering to this but others are a bit more lax, so my concern would be that if I said anything less than an hour a week, there may be a significant drop.

Our students do not all receive the same type of supervision as it varies from placement to placement, but we ensure they all have a social work field instructor who commits to meeting with them once per week. This can be individual or group supervision, in person or via zoom, and internal or external to the agency. We use a combination of strategies to meet this requirement.

We do not require that it is individual supervision and in fact when we place multiple students at one agency, we often suggest that they do group supervision. We have generally not found this to be a problem. 

For agencies without a social work supervisor, we first encourage them to explore their own extended network, board, volunteers, etc, but if that is not an option, we work to help find an external supervisor. We often put this out as a volunteer request to alumni and community practitioners and have been pretty successful and finding people interested in doing this, especially as it can be done remotely.

Usually, myself, and each of our field coordinators also serves as an external field instructor. This has been a nice way to continue having field instructor perspective and can help further develop relationships with specific agencies. Sometimes I have paired one of our field coordinators with an agency who has a new social work grad on staff. In this circumstance, the new social worker serves as a site supervisor and our field coordinator serves as the external field instructor and we do an every other week model with our faculty person providing some mentoring to the new social worker learning to be a field instructor. This has also helped develop strong field instructors once the new grad social worker has 2 years of experience and can be the field instructor independently.

Recently we have been able to hire 1 person as a contracted external field instructor. We pay her as we would an adjunct instructor and she has 8 students she supervises. We wrote the position description to require group supervisor 3/4 times per month and individual supervision once per month. In reality, she has done a lot more individual supervision with the students, but as I envisioned it, I thought she could schedule 2 group supervisions each week so students could have 2 time options available and be in small supervision groups of about 4, then once a month they would each get individual supervision. 

For the most part this combination of options has worked well, although can be a little complicated in the setup!

I hope this helps!

------------------------------
Lindsey Rinehart
Field Education Director
West Virginia University
Morgantown WV
304-293-3501
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2026 08:15
From: Molly Hogan-Fowler
Subject: models of intern supervision

Hello,

I am curious to learn how your programs are structuring supervision for your interns.  My understanding of the 2022 EPAS is only that BSW students must be supervised by someone with a BSW degree or MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience and MSW students must be supervised by someone with an MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience. CSWE does not seem to specify the modality, amount or frequency of the supervision (which I think is new to the 2022 EPAS?).  I am curious to know:

1. How have you structured the supervision requirements for your program?
2. Do all students receive the exact same type, quantity and frequency of supervision?
3. Are any of you using group supervision to meet the supervision requirement for situations where agencies do not have qualified supervisors available (i.e. we are wondering if our school can hire someone to provide group supervision weekly to students placed in settings where there are not qualified social work supervisors available. They would have agency based task supervisors for daily oversight and once a week group supervision with a qualified MSW supervisor.)
4. Is it allowable for some students to have individual supervision and others to have group supervision if that is all that is available for whatever reason.

We have been sticking to our strict (possibly self-imposed) requirement that all students receive at least 1 hour of individual supervision per week from a qualified MSW supervisor and one additional hour of "other" supervision (group, team meeting, clinical rounds, in-service, etc). but it is getting harder and harder to find enough placements with MSW supervisors willing and able to do one hour per week of individual sup for each intern and we are hoping to find other possible solutions.

Thank you so much for any info you can share!

Warmly,

Molly

------------------------------
Molly Hogan-Fowler
Director of Practicum Education
Salem State University
Salem MA
978-542-2575
------------------------------

I thought I responded yesterday, so if another message from me pops up, I apologize for the duplication!

We use a combination of supervision models to meet requirements, really based on the specific agency. Like you say Molly, the CSWE requirements are that the field supervisor has the degree and at least 2 years of experience but does not specify the quantity or modality of the supervision. We do keep the 1 hour per week as a general expectation, I know that some field instructors are more lax than others, so my concern if I were to ever lower that would be that some people may lower way too much.

Here are some of the ways we arrange supervision.

Group supervision is permitted, and in fact when we place multiple students at the same agency, we often encourage this to make the placements more manageable for the field instructors.

Myself, and the 2 faculty members in our field office typically serve as an external field instructor to at least one student a year. I have found that this is a good way to maintain a field instructor perspective and is sometimes helpful in building relationships with specific organizations. We have also sometimes done this intentionally with an organization who does have a social worker, but a newer grad who doesn't have 2 years experience yet. When we've done this, we do sometimes make a specific arrangements to do every other week supervision alternating with the agency social worker, this has served as a good opportunity to mentor a new field instructor until they are able to do it independently.

When we setup a placement with an organization who does not have a social worker, we first encourage them to explore their own network, board, volunteers, etc, to see if they can find someone able to provide the hour per week of supervision. If they don't, we work to help find someone. We reach out through a listserv of alumni and community practitioners, asking for volunteer external supervisors. This supervision can be done in person or remotely. We have had pretty good results in getting people willing to do this.

I have also been able to hire 1 person for the past couple of year, we pay them as we would as an adjunct and they are an external supervisor for 8 students. I setup the position to include group supervision for 3 weeks each month, and individual supervision once a month, with the expectation that the group supervision would be divided in half, to have no more than 4 students in a group.

So ultimately, we do not use the same supervision modality for each student, but really base it on the needs of their specific agency. We do ensure that all students have a social work supervisor.

I hope this helps!

------------------------------
Lindsey Rinehart
Field Education Director
West Virginia University
Morgantown WV
304-293-3501
------------------------------

Original Message:
Sent: Apr 07, 2026 08:15
From: Molly Hogan-Fowler
Subject: models of intern supervision

Hello,

I am curious to learn how your programs are structuring supervision for your interns.  My understanding of the 2022 EPAS is only that BSW students must be supervised by someone with a BSW degree or MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience and MSW students must be supervised by someone with an MSW degree and at least 2 year's post-grad experience. CSWE does not seem to specify the modality, amount or frequency of the supervision (which I think is new to the 2022 EPAS?).  I am curious to know:

1. How have you structured the supervision requirements for your program?
2. Do all students receive the exact same type, quantity and frequency of supervision?
3. Are any of you using group supervision to meet the supervision requirement for situations where agencies do not have qualified supervisors available (i.e. we are wondering if our school can hire someone to provide group supervision weekly to students placed in settings where there are not qualified social work supervisors available. They would have agency based task supervisors for daily oversight and once a week group supervision with a qualified MSW supervisor.)
4. Is it allowable for some students to have individual supervision and others to have group supervision if that is all that is available for whatever reason.

We have been sticking to our strict (possibly self-imposed) requirement that all students receive at least 1 hour of individual supervision per week from a qualified MSW supervisor and one additional hour of "other" supervision (group, team meeting, clinical rounds, in-service, etc). but it is getting harder and harder to find enough placements with MSW supervisors willing and able to do one hour per week of individual sup for each intern and we are hoping to find other possible solutions.

Thank you so much for any info you can share!

Warmly,

Molly

------------------------------
Molly Hogan-Fowler
Director of Practicum Education
Salem State University
Salem MA
978-542-2575
------------------------------