Unsent letters: A technique and exercise in social work supervision

This paper presents an auxiliary tool to be used in social work supervision to help field work trainees to elaborate their feelings regarding their relationships with the client. The phenomenon of emotional blockages in worker-client relationships is familiar to agency supervisors and teachers of field work. A technique for teaching trainees in field work to deal with difficulties of this kind has been developed by the author. This technique consists in a written exercise in which the trainee composes a personal letter to the client that addresses itself to the problems in their relationship. These letters are not sent but used in supervision sessions for the benefit of the trainee.