Experiences of Spanish/English bilingual supervisees.

Abstract

Supervising mental health services conducted in a language that the supervisor does not speak can present a conundrum for both supervisors and supervisees, especially when the supervisee is the only person in the clinic who speaks the language of the client. This qualitative study explored Spanish-language services supervision experiences of bilingual graduate students and professionals during their graduate training. The participants reported feeling burdened and stressed by additional responsibilities. They had little training or supervision to help them develop the language skills necessary to provide competent services in Spanish, so they relied on peer support and networking to cope with the many challenges they faced. The participants appreciated having supervisors who were culturally competent and open to the clients' cultural values. Training programs and supervisors need to be aware of the factors contributing to this stress and examine procedures and practices that may exacerbate or minimize the burdens. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).

We are at Full Capacity”: Social care workers persisting through work-related stress in a new immigrant settlement context in the United States

“…These findings have a number of practical implications. Supportive organisations and senior co‐workers can help provide an environment where social care workers can better cope with work stressors (Lamb & Cogan, ; Travis & Mor Barak, ; Verdinelli & Biever, ). While larger structural interventions that seek to change organisational culture are critical, they can be expensive and time intensive (Maslach et al, ).…”

“…Yet, in such new immigrant destination contexts, without an established community and network of immigrants, the role of social care workers is even more critical in providing support, and comfort as well as assisting recent immigrants’ navigation of complex American bureaucracy and available services (Negi, Cepeda, & Valdez, ). Multiple studies conducted in a variety of social care settings in the United States, United Kingdom and Australia indicate that conditions of scarcity can lead to work related stress, burn‐out, and have a deleterious impact on the quality of services delivered by social care workers (Judd, Dorozenko, & Breen, ; Quevillon, Gray, Erickson, Gonzalez, & Jacobs, ; Teran, Fuentes, Atallah, & Yang, ; Verdinelli & Biever, ). Much of the literature has focused on examining the causes of work stress and burnout in social care (Ahern, Sadler, Lamb, & Gariglietti, ; Bowden, Smith, Worker, & Boxall, ; Tartakovsky & Walsh, ), however, few focus on social care providers’ motivations and responses to work stress; and how providers positively respond and persist in their jobs despite such stressors (Lloyd, King, & Chenoweth, ; Maslach, Schaufeli, & Leiter, ; Moore et al, ).…”

“…Numerous studies have found bilingual social care providers experience higher workloads associated with their bilingual skills, their role as cultural brokers, and work to connect clients with existing and often sparse resources, and advocacy efforts to meet the linguistic and cultural needs of clients within their own organisations (Teran et al, ). Contributing factors of job stress for bilingual social care providers include extra work (such as, translating for other staff) due to lack of bilingual staff; supervisors’ pressure to serve as cultural brokers even when they may not have the same cultural background as clients; requests to provide Spanish‐language services with very little guidance or support (Verdinelli & Biever, ). Studies suggest that low resources and the lack of an adequate social infrastructure to refer immigrant clients to can act as a source of stress, be emotionally taxing and lead to burnout and attrition (Jones et al, ).…”

Feminism as a Tool to Connect Latinas to Graduate Psychology Training

“…An emerging literature has identified this as a pervasive problem among training programs nationwide (Schwartz, Rodriquez, Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Field, 2010). Scholars have discovered the alarmingly common practice of providing little to no Spanish language supervision for trainees working with Spanish speaking Latino families, which results in increased stress on graduate student practitioners and increased risk of violating ethical standards (Castaño, Biever, Gonzalez, & Anderson, 2007;Schwartz, Rodriquez, Santiago-Rivera, Arredondo, & Field, 2010;Verdinelli, & Biever, 2009). This can be achieved by hiring bilingual faculty, or partnering with licensed bilingual clinicians to provide supervision.…”

Les professionnels de la santé et des services sociaux intervenant auprès des francophones minoritaires : l’enjeu du capital social

“…En effet, le peu de ressources professionnelles bilingues dans les organisations se traduit souvent par une surcharge de travail pour ceux qui possèdent cette compétence, ce qui peut entraîner un problème notable dans le maintien des effectifs. Pour faire face à ces conditions de travail plus lourdes, les intervenants bilingues vont chercher du soutien auprès de leurs pairs surtout et affrontent les défis en mettant en place des réseaux de collaborateurs entre intervenants (Verdinelli et Biever, 2009a).…”