Creating Supervision Hubs for Culturally-Concordant Clinical Supervision for Latinx Clients in the United States

Background and Purpose: Evidence regarding the effectiveness of linguistically- and culturally-concordant social service providers for Latinx patients is mixed. This suggests the need for tailored culturally-concordant supervision to support social workers in providing high-quality clinical services for Latinx clients. Culturally-concordant supervision can provide social work clinicians with the skills and competencies to support their own growth, rather than rely on the social worker's identity and personal experience. While there is a well-documented lack of Latinx behavioral health professionals, the lack of Latinx-serving clinical supervisors is even more pronounced. In order to both address disparities in the quality of mental health services for Latinx communities and strengthen the pipeline of new Latinx clinicians, supervision from social workers with expertise in serving Latinx populations is critical. In this study, we present the results of a supervision hub created to provide linguistic and culturally-concordant supervision to agencies that work with Latinx communities across Massachusetts.

Methods: We utilized a community-based systems dynamics approach to develop a best-practice model for a ‘supervision hub’ of Latinx-serving clinical supervisors. We conducted focus groups with Latinx-serving clinical supervisors (N=6) and in-depth interviews with agency administrators who have contracted out for external supervision (N=8) in the greater Boston area. Data taken from the focus groups and in-depth interviews were used to create a theory of practice and a dynamic systems map of a university-based ‘hub’ of clinical supervision for Latinx-serving agencies.

Results: We found that the supervision hub was effective in strengthening behavioral health services for Latinx communities with Latinx community-based agencies because it allowed them to engage MSW interns, and for agencies with established clinical services who wanted to bring in additional expertise regarding Latinx populations. Emergent themes included the need for systems-building within organizations who did not previously provide formal mental health services, the financial burden of supervision on grassroots organizations, and the benefit of having an external perspective for supervisees to process dynamics within organizations. Results indicate the need for systemic structures that ensure the supply of clinical supervisors with Latinx expertise and continuous training on innovative clinical guidelines tailored to diverse Latinx communities.

Conclusions and Implications: University-based clinical supervision hubs may be critical to improving the quality of clinical services for Latinx populations by amplifying the reach of professional networks, ensuring the supply of clinical supervisors, and facilitating ongoing dissemination of current best practices. We present a dynamic systems model that can be used as a guide by other regions to enhance the provision of culturally-congruent clinical supervision. The creation of these hubs can play an important role in expanding the availability of relevant and appropriate behavioral health services for Latinx populations, thereby reducing service disparities and improving the overall quality of services.