Supervising to Resilience in Child and Family Serving Agencies: A Pilot Study

This article offers a model of strengthening the resiliency of the workforce that provides services to children and families. Extracting from a model on teacher education and, as part of a National Child Welfare Workforce Institute (NCWWI) project, a university and government child and family service agency developed an intervention to increase skills of supervisors to promote staff resilience. The three areas of focus were critical thinking, emotional intelligence, and supportive supervision strategies (called Think-Relate-Coach or TRC for short). This article reports on the pilot project. Implications are provided that draw from both the pilot study and extensive review of the research literature. Objective: The objective of this project was to develop and test a model of supervisor training that would transfer learning from training to the workplace, in order to improve supervision strategies. Participants and Setting: Two cohorts of a large, urban government child and family service agency supervisors were randomly selected to be in the intervention (n=11) or control (wait-listed) group (n=10). Methods: Self-reports on critical thinking, emotional intelligence and supportive supervision were conducted at baseline, 6 months after the intervention group completed the intervention, and at 12 months when both groups completed the intervention. Feedback was solicited in focus groups at 6 and 12 months. Results: Comparisons of the treatment and control groups suggest that the intervention was effective in increasing emotional intelligence at 12 months compared to baseline(p<.05), aspects of critical thinking (p<.05) and aspects of supportive supervision (p<.05) at 12 months. All results were in the expected direction even if not statistically significant. Conclusions and Implications: The TRC participants reported benefits from the program, suggesting this type of intervention can strengthen supervision to resilience and transfer learning from training to the workplace. Implications for workforce development are discussed.


Keywords: Workforce Development, Child Welfare, Child and Family Services, Resilient Supervision