Expanding Reflective Supervision in Rhode Island: A Preventive Approach for Community-Based, Early Childhood Settings Serving Trauma-Exposed Families
Principal Investigator
Reflective Supervision (RS) is widely used with professionals in early childhood settings to reduce provider secondary traumatic stress, vicarious trauma, and burnout, and to increase job satisfaction, well-being, and positive outcomes for young children. Most infant and early childhood professionals (IEC), such as child welfare workers, community-based mental health clinicians, and neonatal intensive care nurses, do not have access to RS due to a lack of widespread training for supervisors. The Rhode Island Reflective Supervision Series (RS series) was developed to address this gap in the field and train supervisors in home visiting, early, and education settings on how to provide reflective supervision.
This project aims to test and implement the RS series in a new, high-need setting that is exposed to trauma, such as child welfare. The project team will assess whether the RS series is feasible for supervisors to attend, whether they like and want training in delivering RS, and whether this training results in improved supervisory reflective competencies. The overall goal of this project is to bring training in RS to where it is needed most: in settings where staff, families, and young children are experiencing significant trauma and stress.
