The toll of supervising from an anti-racist framework: reflections from a qualitative study

ABSTRACT

Persistent race-based disparities in all domains of the US indicate the insidious nature of anti-Black racism. The helping professions have an opportunity to assist individuals and communities in working toward racial reconciliation and healing. Anti-racist and anti-oppressive practice standards represent one means to do so. Supervisors play a critical role in guiding anti-racist clinical practice and modeling these tenets. Little empirical scholarship exists around the strategies for supervising from this framework. Understanding these experiences help inform how to support anti-racist supervisors interpersonally and organizationally. Findings from a grounded theory qualitative study with social work supervisors shed light on these experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Anti-racism
• biases
• clinical supervision
• grounded theory
• anti-black racism

Acknowledgments

I am deeply indebted to my dissertation chair, Dr. Vicki Lens, for her encouragement and support of my research process. Great appreciation, also, to my committee chair members, Dr. Alexis Jemal, Dr. Ben Anderson-Nathe, and Dr. Bryan Warde for their insights and contributions. Last, thank you to the participants in this study who shared their vulnerabilities and wisdom toward the goal of strengthening the profession.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Pseudonyms are used throughout.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Sarah Ross Bussey

Sarah Ross Bussey, LCSW, works as Director of Care Management with Mount Sinai Health Partners in NYC and is a post-doctoral fellow with the Briar Patch Collaboratory. Her research interests include anti-racism clinical and community-based interventions, social work practice and anti-racism supervision, effective interventions to enhance and tools to measure critical consciousness, restorative justice and community healing, health disparities, and, critical qualitative methods. She received her B.A. in Sociology from Reed College, Master’s in Social Work at Portland State University (where she was awarded the 2008 NASW Community Based Practice Award), and PhD in Social Welfare at the CUNY Graduate Center. Sarah worked in various capacities of youth work—with a focus on complex trauma, gang-involvement, transgenerational poverty, justice-system entrenchment, housing insecurity, and skill development—before joining an innovative program addressing clinical case management needs in a health care setting.