DOMAIN 4: SECONDARY TRAUMATIC STRESS–INFORMED SUPERVISION
Item 7
Strategies for Supervisors:
- An individual’s identities can impact their experience of STS as well as their sense of safety and support within the organization. This knowledge will help supervisors better understand and support staff, especially those who may hold marginalized identities.
- Consider that people of color and those who hold marginalized identities may have additional vulnerabilities to STS due to
- exposure to the same oppression and institutional racism as client populations;
- identification with clients of a similar background or with similar experiences;
- lack of safety or support in their agency; and
- higher caseloads and being asked to take on additional responsibilities, such as translation or contributing expertise about race and marginalized identities.11
- Reflect on how these dynamics might be relevant to your own work experience and for staff members. Consider whether there are organizational norms, practices, and/or policies that you could be a part of shifting to minimize additional stressors related to these intersections (e.g., assigning higher caseloads and/or added responsibilities).
Implementation Resources:
Fact Sheets
- “How to Talk Effectively About Racism,” from a workshop by Dr. Ken Hardy at the Psychotherapy Network Symposium entitled, “Race Inside and Outside of Therapy Room.”
- From the Annie E. Casey Foundation, the “Guidelines for Authentic Conversations About Race” is a two-page fact sheet with suggestions about how to have productive and authentic conversation about race.
Publications
- “Mindful Practices to Enhance Diversity-Informed Reflective Supervision and Leadership,” by Roseanne Clark, et al., is an article that describes how acknowledging the importance of mindfulness and diversity-informed practices can strengthen individual and group reflective supervision.
- “Diversity Toolkit: A Guide to Discussing Identity, Power, and Privilege,” from the University of Southern California Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work. This toolkit includes activities that you can do with staff and is designed to educate and build self-awareness particularly in environments in which there may be a lack of productive discussion about diversity and the role of identity.
- “Intersectionality, Power, and Relational Safety in Context: Key Concepts in Clinical Supervision,” by P. Hernández and T. McDowell, published in Training and Education in Professional Psychology, 4(1), 29–35. This research article articulates foundational concepts for a supervision framework from a critical post-colonial perspective. The article features the experiences of supervisors and supervisees of color, coupled with the authors’ own experiences as both a supervisor of color and a white supervisor.
Select Action Plan to begin to organize and implement next steps.