Differential Impacts of Supervisory Support on Mental Health Service Providers

Background and Purpose: Research on evidence-based practice emphasizes the critical roles of supervisors as important determinants of successful practice implementation. However, the quality of formal supervision tends to diminish over time, and in standard practice, the attention to supervision varies. This is concerning, particularly when the majority of services are delivered by people who are not fully credentialed professionals (e.g., a bachelor’s degree with no professional training), requiring quality supervision and support from more experienced professionals. Supervision includes different purposes such as administrative, educational, and supportive functions (Kadushin & Harkness, 2002), yet the benefit of these functions for providers has not been well studied. The current study examined the differential impacts of perceived supervisory support of mental health service providers in their practice.        

Methods: This study was a secondary data analysis of data collected from 193 direct clinical care workers at two community mental health centers. They were mostly white (86%) and female (80%), and the average age was 40 (±12) years old. About half of the workers held degrees in either social work or psychology. The average work experience within the agencies was 5 (±6) years. Structural equation modeling was used to examine the impact of different types of perceived supervisory support (i.e., emotional, client goal-centered, and developmental/educational support; Fukui et al, 2013) on burnout (Maslach et al, 1996), job satisfaction (Nagy, 2002), work-life conflict (Carlson et al, 2000), and perceived quality of care for clients (Salyers et al, 2015). Mplus 7.1 was used for the analysis.

Results: Higher emotional support by supervisors was associated with reduced burnout (β=0.5) and improved work-life balance (β=0.5), job satisfaction (β=.5), and quality of care (β=0.4). In addition, higher client goal-centered support by supervisors was associated with increased person-centered care (β=0.3), a subtype of quality of care. Finally, developmental/educational support by supervisors was associated with improved personal accomplishment (β=0.2), yet adversely associated with work-life conflict (work having greater conflict with life) (β=0.4). The tested model fit the data well (χ²₍₂₆₎=561.22, p<.001, RMSEA=.050 _{[90% CL .041 - .058]}, CFI=.952, TLI=.941).

Conclusions and implications: The current study empirically tested the positive impact of support from direct supervisors on burnout, work-life conflict, and job satisfaction in direct service providers. It is also found that supervisory support may contribute to improved quality of care for clients. Most importantly, the study further suggested that strategic supervision may address supervisees’ specific needs in facilitating quality of work. For instance, providing emotional support would be critical when preventing burnout or work-life conflict of workers. Supporting workers to help with client goal achievement could promote the person-centered care. Increased sense of personal accomplishment is important for workers to feel making a difference in their practice, which could be enhanced by supervisors’ educational support; however, while also working to not increase work-life conflict. The implications of these findings for developing an effective client-centered supervision method to support workers in helping clients with their goal achievement as well as attending to workers’ well-being in social work practices will be discussed.