There is no separating the challenges of our time from the work we do as therapists.

And while the core of what makes “good therapy” endures, effective supervision requires us to take stock of the greater forces that impact the culture and context our supervisees and their clients are moving through.

In this powerful and reflective keynote session, celebrated clinical psychologist and author Mary Pipher reimagines therapy for a new generation. You’ll walk away with the insight and skills to:

• Identify the anthropological and cultural forces that have shaped this moment in time
• Name what remains timeless at the core of good therapeutic work
• Translate Pipher’s insights into how you supervise and support the next generation of clinicians

Cultural humility supports a strong supervisory alliance – but aside from having good intentions, how do you demonstrate it in real time?

Most trainings don’t include the relational, process-based skills that foster cultural attunement, even though supervision guidelines suggest that it's essential.

In this session, Dr. Karen Tao – co-developer of the Multicultural Orientation (MCO) framework and contributor to the most recent APA Guidelines for Clinical Supervision – will teach you how to apply cultural humility in practice, cultural comfort under pressure, and cultural opportunity for repair. You’ll get:

• Techniques for recognizing and responding to cultural markers as they arise
• Practical strategies to manage reactions to charged topics without avoidance or intellectualization
• Concrete tools to recognize and repair the alliance when misattunement and misunderstanding occurs

Effective supervision has always required the ability to see what a supervisee might miss.

And your supervisees likely don’t know as much about neuroaffirming practice as they need to.

In this session, Jamie Roberts, LMFT – founder of NeuroPebble Corp, a continuing education platform for neuro-affirming clinical training from instructors with lived experience – will give you a framework and specific tools to increase your own confidence and build supervisee competence. You’ll get:

• A framework for shifting into a strengths-based approach that honors diversity
• Tools for common areas of misunderstanding including executive functioning, communication, and more
• Neuroaffirming strategies for clinical documentation to reduce potential harm

More students with disabilities are entering graduate training to become clinicians and will need support in incorporating their disability into their professional identity.

Yet disability issues are rarely included in supervision training.

In this session, Dr. Rhoda Olkin – developer of Disability-Affirmative Therapy and author of What Psychotherapists Should Know about Disability – will give you the skills you need to work competently with disabled supervisees. You’ll get:

• Tools to create a supervisory environment that encourages disability disclosure and embraces intersectionality
• Tips about the legal process of disability documentation
• Specific suggestions of reasonable accommodations for supervisees with ASD, ADHD, psychiatric conditions, and more

Most supervisee complaints don’t start with a bad supervisor. They start with small habits: the hard evaluation that gets softened, the check-in that gets skipped (again), the vulnerable conversation that gets avoided. There’s a big difference between being a flexible supervisor and being a lenient one.

The good news? You already have the skills to fix this common dynamic. In this session, supervision expert and mental health leadership advocate Kate McLellan Walker, LPC-S, LMFT-S, shares her decades of experience to show you exactly how to put those skills to use in the supervisory relationship. You’ll learn to:

• Spot the difference between leniency and avoidance before it becomes a liability
• Build a repeatable process for orientation, evaluation, feedback, and remediation
• Protect the supervisory relationship while still holding the line on accountability

Full session description and takeaways coming soon!

It can happen unintentionally.

Wanting to be helpful, you give more direction to a supervisee than they need. And supervision becomes more focused on the supervisor’s expertise than the supervisee’s development.

In this session, Charla Yearwood, LCSW – director of Our Therapy Lab, a student-run clinic focused on expanding access to culturally-responsive care – will help you make the shift from clinical manager to supportive mentor. You’ll get:

• Strategies to transform uncertainty, mistakes, and challenges into opportunities for professional development
• A guided problem solving framework to support supervisees in reasoning and solution-formation
• Graduated problem solving tools to increase supervisee confidence and decrease dependency on supervisory expertise

Full session description and takeaways coming soon!

It’s scary enough to see clients at elevated risk for suicide when you’re the therapist.

But when you’re the supervisor and your care for the client is one step removed –

It can be downright unnerving.

In this session, M. David Rudd – world-renowned expert in clinical suicidology – will walk you through a step-by-step framework for supervision in the delivery of care to suicidal clients. Reduce your own anxiety with the latest standard-of-care strategies to help supervisees reduce risk. You’ll get:

• Tools for narrative assessment so supervisees can assist clients in talking openly about suicidal thoughts
• Evidence-based strategies for reducing risk, including crisis response planning and lethal means counseling
• Key information about negligence, malpractice, and how to meet the standard of care

Full session description and takeaways coming soon!