Sold Out Growing Professionally, Clinically and Personally: A Reflective Supervision Group for Supervisors and Clinicians

Providing mental health services and clinical supervision during these challenging times can be complex, demanding, and crucial. The typical model of coming to the supervisor and getting advice on what to do with clients does not adequately meet the needs of clinicians and clients today. Supervisors need a different model that attends, first, to the clinicians themselves and then their experience with clients. Supervisors must also comprehend how the experiences of clinicians and clients are interwoven within larger systems that impact them, such as race, class, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc.

This online training has been designed for supervisors and clinicians interested in expanding their reflective practice to meet these multifaceted needs. Our Reflective Group Supervision-Consultation (RGS-C) training model was developed out of work at the Center for the Developing Child and Family at the Ackerman Institute for the Family. RGS-C is an innovative approach to supervision and consultation that supports supervisors and clinicians in understanding a client’s needs through collaboration, curiosity, non-judgment, and compassion. This model rests on the foundation provided by the Ackerman Relational Approach and individual reflective supervision practices, emotion-focused and attachment-based therapies, and social justice. Class structure will include an initial individual meeting with each participant, lecturettes, experiential exercises, participation in Reflective Group Supervision sessions, readings, and discussion.

Learning Objectives:

• Participants enhance their understanding of systems theory and the impact of social and political contexts in their clinical work and supervision.
• Participants identify their social locations and can bring discussions of social location into their clinical work.
• Participants enhance their reflective capacities and learn to guide supervisees’ reflective skills of validation, empathy, compassion, curiosity, attunement, and mindfulness.
• Participants learn to participate actively in Reflective Group and Individual Supervision sessions.
• Participants gain an initial understanding of the process and skills needed to conduct Reflective Group/Individual Supervision sessions.

Presenters:

Christine Reynolds, LCSW is an adjunct faculty member of the Ackerman Institute and a founding faculty member of the Institute’s Center for the Developing Child and Family, where she consults and provides training on working with families with young children. Christine has over 25 years of postgraduate clinical and consulting experience in child welfare, home-based family therapy, community mental health, early childhood, and private practice in rural and urban environments. She has enhanced a model of supervision called Reflective Group Supervision/Consultation (RGS-C). Additionally, Christine maintains a private practice in Manhattan specializing in families, couples, and children.

Brenda Nikelsberg, LCSW is also a faculty member in the Center for the Developing Child and Family at the Ackerman Institute. Brenda is the Co-Director of the Competent Kids Caring Communities Project and practices as a therapist in private practice. She has extensive experience as a consultant to Early Head Start programs and schools and co-facilitates training for Head Start supervisors in reflective group and individual supervision.

Date / Time:

Fridays, February 2, 16, March 1, April 5, May 3, June 7, 2024
10:30 am–12:30 pm (ET)
Zoom link will be provided in advance of the workshop.