Clinical Supervision, Reflective Practice and Professional Consultation

Online across Australia and internationally

Secure Start provides specialist clinical supervision, reflective practice and professional consultation to practitioners, teams, service leaders and organisations working with children, young people and families experiencing complexity, adversity and involvement with care and protection systems.

Who I work with

My current supervision and consultation work spans Australia, the United Kingdom and Ireland and includes:

• clinical and service leaders in residential and social care
• owners and leaders of supported accommodation services
• organisations delivering kinship care stabilisation, family preservation and reunification services
• multidisciplinary teams providing therapeutic services to children and young people in out-of-home care
• teams providing mental health and related support to birth parents where there is a risk of children entering state care.

This breadth of work provides an opportunity to think across traditional service boundaries while remaining attentive to the particular responsibilities, pressures and practice realities of each setting.

What supervision offers

Good supervision is more than case management or oversight. It creates protected space to think.

Work with children and families experiencing significant adversity can be emotionally demanding and clinically complex. Practitioners and leaders are often required to make important decisions in circumstances where there is uncertainty, competing needs, organisational pressure and significant responsibility.

Supervision provides an opportunity to slow the work down sufficiently to consider:

What is really going on here?

What might be influencing the way I or we are understanding and responding to it?

What can we do that is most likely to be helpful?

What would a good outcome look like?

The emphasis is on developing reflective capacity rather than simply providing answers.

A relational and reflective approach

My approach to supervision is informed by attachment theory, developmental trauma, relational practice, psychodynamic thinking and contemporary understandings of therapeutic care.

Particular attention is given to the interaction between:

• the needs and experiences of children and families
• the emotional responses of practitioners
• relationships within teams
• organisational expectations and pressures
• professional roles, responsibilities and boundaries
• the wider systems in which the work takes place.

Emotional responses to difficult work are not treated simply as something practitioners need to manage or put aside. They can also provide valuable information about the child, family, team or system and about what may be occurring within professional relationships.

Supervision therefore supports practitioners to remain thoughtful, curious and purposeful when the work itself makes thoughtful practice difficult.

Supervision for leaders

Leadership in therapeutic, social care and child and family services brings its own challenges.

Leaders must attend simultaneously to the needs of children and families, the wellbeing and development of staff, organisational requirements, risk, service quality and the pressures associated with responsibility for complex practice.

Individual supervision for clinical and service leaders provides an independent space outside the organisation in which to think about:

• complex practice and clinical decisions
• leadership challenges
• team dynamics
• organisational processes
• professional boundaries
• risk and responsibility
• staff development
• service quality and therapeutic culture.

Independent supervision can be particularly valuable for senior practitioners and leaders who spend much of their working life providing containment, guidance and support to others.

Team reflective supervision

I also provide regular supervision and reflective practice to teams.

Team supervision provides an opportunity to move beyond discussion of individual cases and consider recurring patterns across the work: what particular children and families evoke in the team, how teams respond under pressure, where practice becomes stuck, and what organisational conditions support or interfere with thoughtful practice.

Done well, reflective supervision can contribute to a culture in which uncertainty can be acknowledged, difficult experiences can be thought about, and practitioners can remain curious rather than becoming overly reactive, defensive or procedural.

Professional consultation

Not every organisation requires an ongoing supervision arrangement.

I also provide consultation concerning particularly complex cases, practice dilemmas, service development, therapeutic models of care and organisational approaches to working with children and families affected by adversity.

Consultation can be provided as a one-off engagement or alongside an existing supervision, training or implementation arrangement.

Areas of particular experience

My supervision and consultation practice is particularly relevant to services working in:

• child protection
• foster and kinship care
• residential and social care
• supported accommodation
• out-of-home care
• family preservation and reunification
• therapeutic services for children and young people
• parent mental health and family support
• trauma-responsive and attachment-informed practice
• therapeutic models of care.

Flexible arrangements

Supervision and consultation can be provided to:

Individuals — including practitioners, clinical leaders, service managers and organisational leaders.

Teams — including multidisciplinary clinical, therapeutic and social care teams.

Organisations — through regular reflective consultation, practice development and support around complex service delivery.

Sessions are generally provided online, allowing ongoing supervision relationships with practitioners and organisations across Australia and internationally.

Enquiries

If you are interested in individual supervision, team reflective practice or professional consultation, please contact Secure Start to discuss your needs and whether my experience and approach are a good fit for your service.

Colby Pearce
Principal Clinical Psychologist
Secure Start®

colby@securestart.com.au
+61 403 350 411