Downloadable Version of the Reflective Supervision IMH Consultant Competencies
General Guidelines
The Connecticut Association for Infant Mental Health (CT-AIMH) recommends that each consultant who is hired to provide reflective supervision or consultation to an individual or group on behalf of the promotion of infant mental health be:
- Knowledgeable about the community in which the individual/group provides service
- Fully informed and respectful of agency policies, regulations, protocols and rules that govern the individual’s or group’s services, as well as program standards and specific components of those services
- Knowledgeable and respectful of leadership roles within the agency
- Able to establish positive working relationships with agency personnel
CT-AIMH recommends that each consultant is knowledgeable about:
- Early development, from pregnancy through labor/delivery and the first 3 years of life, typical and atypical, complex and in multiple domains
- Attachment theory and the importance of early relationships to development
- Families, their importance to each child’s development, their differences, cultural norms and values
- Developmental competence and psychopathology, identification of strengths and risks
- Situations specific to risk: prematurity, birth of a baby with special needs, the death of an infant, adolescent parenthood, mental illness, alcohol and drug abuse, child abuse and neglect, domestic violence, homelessness, trauma, poverty, grief and loss
- Assessment approaches, sensitive to understanding the infant or toddler within the context of each caregiving relationship, and assessment “tools”
- Service or intervention models, techniques and principles appropriate to the program
- Principles and practices promoting infant mental health
- Relationship-based services
- Reflective practice
CT-AIMH recommends that each consultant demonstrate the following skills:
- For the purposes of this document, the term “consultant” refers to the provider of reflective supervision/consultation.
- Ability to meet regularly and consistently as agreed upon by the individual/group
- Ability to create a place where individual/group feels safe in describing and exploring their experiences, thoughts and feelings about the work with infants, very young children and families
- Ability to enter into and sustain trusting relationships with individual/group
- Ability to model and encourage nurturing behavior
- Ability to provide meaningful support, being careful to enhance competency and self- worth
- Ability to provide developmental guidance as appropriate, following individual/group’s lead
- Ability to reduce the sense of isolation or loneliness that often accompanies work with infants, toddlers and families referred for services
- Ability to observe, listen, wonder and respond
- Ability to pay attention to the emotional state of each individual/group
- Ability to facilitate the expression of thoughts and feelings awakened by the work, talk about them, contain them, and offer comfort and support
- Ability to have and express empathy in response to the experiences, thoughts and feelings shared individually and within the group; nurture empathy in others
- Ability to attend to both the content (that is, what is happening with a particular infant or toddler and family, program or center) and the process underlying these events, including the feelings evoked by both the content and the process
- Ability to give the individual/group the opportunity to experience his/her feelings consciously, and to understand them in the light of the infant or toddler’s development, parent-child relationship needs, parental history and current challenges
- Ability to ask questions that encourage reflective practice
- Ability to help individual/group to explore the parallel process, using feelings to inform understanding of the infant, the parent, the early developing relationship and self
- Willingness to seek additional expertise when the consultant recognizes concerns that may be beyond the consultant’s scope of practice
Of additional importance, CT-AIMH recommends that each consultant follow the “Best Practice Guidelines for Reflective Supervision/Consultation” specifically:
- Remains culturally aware and sensitive to each individual/group
- Recognizes and responds to individual/group’s thoughts, feelings of vulnerability and confusion, as well as strengths
- Encourages the exploration of thoughts, feelings and strengths, as appropriate to the individual/group
- Remains open, emotionally available and curious
- Regularly examines own thoughts, feelings, strengths and issues of concern with a trusted supervisor/mentor