The Structure of Reflective Supervision

Open Doors-Parent-child Relationships, the Cornerstone to School Readiness in the Home-based Option-Clip 6C

Brenda Jones-Harden: I just want to underscore your point about reflective supervision, because I think no home-visiting program should exist without providing reflective supervision to their Home Visitors. And I would argue that it needs to be every single week, because I feel like this is probably the hardest work, because you're out there pretty much on your own, without the support of the agency.

I mean, it would be nice if we could carry the agency with us into those neighborhoods and into those homes and those communities, but we can't. So, it is so important for us to have a secure place to go back and not only to think about, you know, how we can improve our skills and all that kind of stuff, but to have a place where you can just say, "I'm tired," or, "This family scares me," or, "I don't like this mom," where you get somebody who says to you -- just like we want you to do with the families -- "I care about you, and I don't want you to feel so stressed out.

So, let's think together, in a collaborative way, about how you can manage this case, so that it doesn't feel so badly to you," or, "Let's think about the pieces of you that are getting in the way," or, "Let's think about your boundaries," all those things that all of us in this field unfortunately deal with throughout our careers, because working with families make those kind of things come up.