The September BABCP Article of the Month is from the Cognitive Behaviour Therapist (tCBT) and is entitled “Exploring the supervisory relationship in the context of culturally responsive supervision: a supervisee’s perspective” by Bianca Vekaria, Tessa Thomas, Peter Phiri and Margarita Ononaiye.

On my first day of doctoral training to become a Clinical Psychologist, I vividly remember looking around the room and becoming aware that I was the only person of colour who had gotten onto training that year. This was very different to my experiences of growing up in North West London, where I was often surrounded by people from a multitude of different racial/ethnic backgrounds.

Training outside of London rapidly made me more aware of my own racial identity and my difference. I wanted to reflect further on my racial identity and how it impacted my clinical work. I also wanted to learn more about becoming a culturally responsive clinician. I remember thinking that clinical supervision would be a perfect space to explore my reflections further, however conversations here often felt awkward and lacked depth. I also wondered why it was always me who brought conversations to supervision and whether this was even appropriate. I often felt like I wasn’t being seen or heard when supervisors glossed over my racial identity or didn’t take an interest, it felt like they didn’t understand how important it was to who I was as a person and how I practiced clinically. I realised that this then impacted on how I would perceive supervisors, how safe I felt and how much I felt comfortable sharing with them. I also noticed that when supervisors did take an interest in my racial identity in a culturally responsive way, I felt validated and comfortable to share more.

This made me wonder about the experiences of other supervisees from racially/ethnically minoritized (REM) backgrounds. I wondered how many people felt safe to talk about race and ethnicity in supervision and how this impacted their relationship with their supervisor.

This paper is the first of its kind to explore cultural responsivity in supervision and how this can impact the supervisory relationship. We found that supervisees from REM backgrounds supervised by White supervisors perceived their supervision as significantly less culturally responsive, they experienced more instances of harmful culturally unresponsive practices, and reported significantly lower quality supervisory relationships. We also found that greater perceived cultural responsivity in supervision significantly predicted better supervisory relationships (regardless of the supervisee’s racial/ethnic background). Findings suggest that culturally responsive supervisory practices may play an important role in developing culturally responsive clinicians and strengthening the supervisory relationship, particularly for REM supervisees.  

One of the strengths of this paper is the diversity of participants. We incorporated a range of professionals from different therapeutic backgrounds and 39% of our sample self-identified as belonging to a REM group, who are often underrepresented in research studies. However, we are aware that this paper is not without its limitations, we recognise that it would also be important to further explore supervisor perspectives to complement findings. Particularly supervisors from REM backgrounds, who were under-represented within our sample.

We hope that supervisees and supervisors reading this paper will further reflect on their own practices, their own racial/ethnic identity and the space they give to discussing race and ethnicity in supervision. We hope that this is the start of further research into developing cultural responsivity and humility in clinical supervision so that we can better serve and understand clients from all communities.

From Richard Thwaites, Editor-in-Chief of tCBT: Why I chose this article

When I saw this research discussed at the 2022 BABCP conference and heard it had not been published, I was keen to encourage it to be submitted to tCBT and am excited to see it reviewed and accepted within our journal This is an important paper and as Bianca has pointed out, if reading this paper acts as a springboard for supervisors and supervises to talk about their own ethnicities and how these have impacted on their personal and professional experiences then it will have  played a part in changing the landscape of CBT. It will have helped create a profession where staff can express their whole identities at work, and staff can be supported to consider their own ethnic identify as well as those of their patients in order to maximise patient outcomes and ensure that their work setting is a supportive and actively anti-racist environment.