Culturally responsive supervision: deconstructing white supremacy within the supervisory relationship

Clinical supervision is a foundational mechanism through which the mental health field reproduces its values, practices, and professional norms. Current models of supervision fail to interrogate how white supremacy is embedded in the history, training structures, and epistemologies of the field. As a result, supervision often functions as a site of unexamined power, reinforcing racialized hierarchies, silencing marginalized knowledge, and perpetuating inequities for supervisors, supervisees, and clients. The authors propose a model of supervision titled “Culturally Responsive Supervision (CRS),” rooted in Relational-Cultural Theory, Helms’s Racial Identity Theory, and Helms’s Social Interaction Model. These theories serve as a theoretical basis for our CRS model, which accounts for the role of race(s), culture(s), and power in supervisory relationships. The CRS model has five components: (1) Name Race(s), Culture(s), and Power; (2) Establish mutual trust; (3) Engage in self-reflection; (4) Integrate race(s) & culture(s), and; (5) Engage in ongoing learning. The purpose of this paper is to offer supervisors across clinical fields a supervision model that supports the development of cultural competence as a lifelong process. This model is intended to foster cultural humility, curiosity, and responsiveness, while also facilitating a growth-fostering supervisory relationship that enhances both clinical supervision and the trainee experience.