A Synergistic Model to Enhance Multicultural Competence in Supervision

Abstract

The Synergistic Model of Multicultural Supervision is an integration of 3 existing models to provide concrete and practical guidance for supervisors wishing to enhance supervisee multicultural competence in personally meaningful and developmentally appropriate ways. The model attends to both content and process within the supervisory session and promotes multicultural counselor competence through increasing cognitive complexity, self-reflection, and structured interventions.

International Doctoral Students in Counselor Education: Coping Strategies in Supervision Training

“…Furthermore, despite a clear recognition of the supervisory relationship as the major vehicle for learning in supervision, our findings indicated academic and social disconnections between international doctoral trainees and their faculty supervisors. Consequently, despite the counseling profession's strong emphasis on supervisor multicultural competence (Garrett et al, 2001;Ober, Granello, & Henfield, 2009), international supervisors' opportunities to learn more about U.S. culture by interacting with U.S. citizens was seriously constrained, as stated by more than half of the participants. Ng and Smith (2009) suggested the need to move away from a deficit-oriented view of international counseling students to one that focuses on their strengths and strategies.…”

Conceptual Application of the Discrimination Model of Clinical Supervision for Direct Care Workers in Adolescent Residential Treatment Settings

“…It is also important to provide education on the Code of Ethics: Standards for Practice of North American Child and Youth Care Professionals (Association for Child and Youth Practice 1995), and Competencies for Professional Child and Youth Work Practitioners (Mattingly et al 2002) as part of clinical supervision. Finally, direct care workers have varied cultural backgrounds and cultural competency levels (Ober et al 2009), and many could benefit from supervision in this area as well. For example, having guest speakers of diverse backgrounds talk about cultural issues can provide opportunities for staff to interact with individuals of varying backgrounds and gain an understanding of the importance of cultural issues.…”

Culturally Affirming Clinical Supervision in Graduate Field Education: Enhancing Transformative Dialogue in the Supervisory Dyad

“…The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT, 2014) states supervision is a process of evaluating, training, and providing oversight to trainees to help them attain systematic clinical skills. Counseling supervision is defined as a developmental process that promotes competence for counselors (Ober, Granello & Henfield, 2009). Pack (2012) asserts that clinical supervision is a forum for ensuring that an ongoing process and structure is available to social workers for professional development.…”

“…125) However, to authentically address culture within supervision, one must not digress groups to white, black, brown, but instead understand and address the vast differences within these subcategories and in an individual's unique experience (Young, 2004). Cultural competence in supervision is not just working with one's race/ethnicity, but also other identity marking variables such as age, gender, sexual orientation and socio-economic-status (Hair, 2015;Ober, Granello & Henfield, 2009). While supervisors retain a sizable responsibility in initiating this exchange, clinicians of color are challenged to identify the type of supervision that is considerate of their lens, best meets their nuanced needs and challenges their own perspectives (Hair & O' Donoghue, 2009;Ober, Granello & Henfield, 2009).…”

“…Navigating the differing identities of supervisors, supervisees and clients creates complexities that directly impact the supervisory relationship (Burkard, Knox, Clarke, Phelps & Inman, 2012;Ober, Granello & Henfield, 2009). Engaging in dialogue around identity, power and privilege disrupts the typical teacher-learner supervisory hierarchy, creating awkwardness and discomfort for many supervisors (Burkard, Knox, Clarke, Phelps & Inman, 2012;Hair & O' Donoghue, 2009;Pack, 2012).…”