Background Safeguarding supervision is a necessity for practitioners such as health visitors when working with vulnerable families who have been subjected to potential abuse and neglect. Safeguarding teams are established in all local health boards (LHB) across the UK. The safeguarding team at the LHB featured in this study provided regular one-to-one safeguarding supervision every three to six months, which had a significant cost implication for the team. It was suggested by the LHB that group safeguarding supervision be evaluated.

Aim To explore health visitors’ and safeguarding nurse advisers’ (SNAs) thoughts, feelings and experiences concerning a new model of group safeguarding supervision that aimed to inform future practice locally, and potentially across Wales.

Method Group supervision was implemented across a Welsh LHB with a health visiting service comprising 24 health visitors. Questionnaires were given to identify where each health visitor worked, and to formulate question prompts for the focus groups and interviews that followed. Focus groups were conducted with health visitors, while interviews were conducted with SNAs, to explore their thoughts and experiences of the group supervision model.

Results Only 16 of the 24 health visitors were available to take part in the focus groups. Overall, 11 of the 16 health visitors preferred group supervision to one-to-one supervision. Some felt that group supervision alone may not be enough, and some still required one-to-one supervision alongside the group sessions. Health visitors who had been qualified for less than three years felt one-to-one supervision was more effective.

Conclusion Group safeguarding supervision was generally well-received by the health visitors in this evaluation, although some suggestions were made for improvements to the sessions. In particular, smaller group sizes and longer sessions to enable greater discussion of cases.