Reflective Supervision: A Planning Tool for Home Visiting Supervisors

Publication Date: September 22, 2022
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  • Published: 2022

Introduction

Home visiting programs widely recognize reflective supervision as a promising form of professional development, yet supervisors lack a common definition and framework to apply it in daily practice.

The Supporting and Strengthening the Home Visiting Workforce project seeks to understand reflective supervision in the home visiting context: how it should be defined, measured, and bolstered to improve staff, program, and family outcomes.

Purpose

This brief introduces five categories of key elements associated with reflective supervision. It then presents a tool to help supervisors plan, conduct, and reflect on sessions with a focus on those elements. Readers may print a copy of the blank tool and/or refer to a sample completed tool in the appendix.

The brief builds on findings from a research report and conceptual model previously released by OPRE.

Key Findings and Highlights

Supervisors should establish goals for each session, consider the context in which sessions occur, and select relevant items from the following list of key elements:

  • Structure and mode of delivery
  • Focus of the session
  • Reflective process
  • Supervisor techniques
  • Supervisory relationship

Methods

The information presented in the brief stems from a conceptual model developed through a five-step, iterative process:

  1. Review of literature to identify definitions, key elements, indented outcomes, and influential factors related to reflective supervision
  2. Review and integration of concepts from existing conceptual models of reflective supervision
  3. Review and integration of key concepts from broader literature describing relevant social and behavioral theories of change
  4. Incorporation of feedback gathered in a series of virtual meetings with local program staff, state awardees of the Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting (MIECHV) Program, Tribal MIECHV grantees, model representatives, and training/TA providers
  5. Ongoing consultation with experts

Citation

West, A., & Madariaga, P. (2022). Reflective supervision: A planning tool for home visiting supervisors (OPRE Report No. 2022-138). Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation; Administration for Children and Families; U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Glossary

Key element:
An important part of reflective supervision that adds value or contributes to improvements in outcomes