Enhancing fieldwork supervision: impacts of the Together We Grow training and peer support program – a pilot study

Fieldwork education quality hinges on skilled supervisors, but being a competent social worker does not automatically translate into effective supervision. Despite this, research on developing fieldwork supervisors’ competencies remains sparse. This pilot study evaluates ‘Together We Grow’—an innovative training and peer support programme for fieldwork supervisors in Hong Kong—using a mixed-method, quasi-experimental design with 27 supervisors and their students. Supervisors completed the Generic Supervision Assessment Tool pre- and post-intervention, showing significant score improvements across all participants. Experienced supervisors demonstrated larger gains than newer ones. Post-intervention interviews revealed multiple programme impacts and success mechanisms. While students’ GPAs showed no significant differences between experimental and control groups, qualitative analysis of student responses identified one cross-cutting theme across all participants and one theme more prominent among students in the experimental group. This pilot demonstrates the programme’s potential to enhance supervisory competencies regardless of experience level, with differential benefits based on supervisor background. The identification of specific impact mechanisms and student experience patterns provides a foundation for programme refinement. These findings highlight the program’s impacts and underlying mechanisms, offering valuable insights to inform potential scale-up studies and replication efforts in other contexts.