Competency Based Supervision Including Alliance, Integrity, Feedback and Cultural Humility in Supporting Supervisees in Their Development

In this episode, Carol discusses how early in her career she was hired to be the assistant director of training for a child and family guidance clinic, and became very intrigued in the processes of clinical supervision. After a decade, she became Director of Training at another American Psychological Association accredited program and developed the site visit documentation, which led her to collaborate with her future coauthor, Ed Shafranske, Ph.D., to develop a model of supervision. She explained how their model is transtheoretical, providing a framework for supervisors to provide supervision systematically and intentionally. She said that most clinicians provide supervision the way they were supervised, through osmosis, or internalizing practices done unto them, rather than using a particular model or being guided by research and evidence. She pointed out that increasingly, high rates of inadequate and even harmful supervision are being reported by supervisees, and how the process of becoming a supervisor varies dramatically. Some supervisors simply begin, utilizing practices that were done unto them during their training trajectory; others have taken a workshop, and some have a longer training period with a substantial sequence of courseswork, experiential training, video review, and targeted feedback to develop their skills as a supervisor. She explained that in their model focus is on a process that includes development of the supervisory alliance, monitoring that alliance over time attentive to the perspectives of cultural humility with respect to the clients, supervisees, and supervisor. Additionally it includes focus on reacivity or countertransference, supervisee self-care, legal and ethical issues, attending to a communitarian constellation, an environment of caring, respect, and support. We discussed having strong boundaries around supporting the supervisee in instances of reactivity in regards to client, while at the same time, never crossing the boundary to provide psychotherapy to the supervisee. In talking about supporting supervisees, she discussed trauma informed supervision and helping supervisees to have an understanding how their nervous system is affected, as well as helping them have tools for regulating their activation. She pointed out that the ultimate job of the supervisor is to protect clients, and gatekeeping, ensuring that unsuitable supervisees do not enter the profession. Carol discussed cultural humility and power in the supervisory relationship and how she and her co-author encourage supervisors to be open about their various identities and privilege from the outset of the supervisory relationship and throughout. She encourages giving feedback regularly throughout supervision, and being honest and transparent about the supervisee’s development and scaffolding their strengths to improve the areas that are in development, rather than avoiding giving corrective feedback until review time. She discusses how monitoring client outcomes and feedback is critical and often left out in supervision, as well as encouraging supervisee self-assessment and not being fearful of give needed feedback to the supervisee. Carol Falender, Ph.D. is co-author of multiple books on clinical supervision including Clinical Supervision: A Competency-based Approach (2004; second edition, 2021), Getting the Most Out of Clinical Training and Supervision: A Guide for Practicum Students and Interns (2012) The Essentials of Competency-based Clinical Supervision (2017), co-editor of Casebook for Competency-based Clinical Supervision and all with Edward Shafranske; Multiculturalism and Diversity in Clinical Supervision: A Competency-based Approach (2014) edited with Edward Shafranske and Celia Falicov. She edited one book on consultation, Consultation in Psychology: A Competency-based Approach (2020) with Edward Shafranske. She has written numerous articles and conducted workshops and symposia internationally. She directed APA approved training programs for over 20 years and was a member of the Supervision Guidelines Group of the Association of State and Provincial Psychology Boards (ASPPB) and Chair of the Supervision Guidelines Task Force of the Board of Educational Affairs of APA. Dr. Falender is a Fellow of American Psychological Association (APA; Divisions 37. 29 and 43). She is an Adjunct Professor at Pepperdine University, Clinical Professor in the UCLA Department of Psychology. She was the recipient of a Presidential Citation from the American Psychological Association for innovative contributions to the theory and practice of clinical supervision, nationally and internationally, and in 2018 received the Distinguished Career Contributions to Education and Training in Psychology Award from the American Psychological Association. In 2023, she received The Chuck Faltz Lifetime Achievement Award from the California Psychological Association and the Distinguished Award for the International Advancement of Psychotherapy by APA's Division 29.