The Interplay of Social Work Licensure and Supervision:

Licensure is a growing trend within the social work profession and the movement toward external regulation of practice is expected to continue. The National Association of Social Workers is working to bring about uniform legislation, and yet little empirical research has been conducted into licensure's influence of the profession. This paper describes the results of an exploratory survey of the interplay between the two most common forms of licensure, registration and certification, and supervision. Associations were found between the supervisee's context of employment, the way supervision is conducted and licensure. These findings suggest that licensure is an important influence on supervision and identifies areas for future study.