This episode is the second in a three-episode arc that presents the Hierarchy of Interventions.  This grouping of 10 interventions forms a core curriculum of counseling skills used by residential staff to encourage the development of kids’ self-regulation abilities.  Last episode focused on using Distraction, Engaging, and Verbal Redirection to interrupt and prevent kids from going down an off-track path toward increased emotional, cognitive, and behavioral dysregulation.  This episode introduces the Aspect Compass model of the human mind.  Understanding this metaphor for how the mind works, makes it easier for direct-care counseling staff to move beyond the behavior-management level of intervention and instead help kids develop their self-regulation abilities.  

This episode revisits those three interventions from the perspective of the Aspect Compass Model and then goes on to present the labeling intervention.  Different variations on the Labeling intervention are used to increase clients’ self-monitoring of their own behaviors, their own bodies, their own feelings, and their own developing social skills.  One variation on Labeling is also used in place of giving directions and setting limits.  Those interventions are intended to encourage compliance, where labeling encourages kids to choose cooperation.   

This episode on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway moves away from a focus on managerial skills and switches to a focus on counseling skills to be taught to direct-care Child Care Counselors.  It presents 10 interventions, or techniques, for Counselors to use with kids when they become off-track, dysregulated, and uncentered.  Skillful use of this package of interventions starts with understanding the ways in which they can be thought of as forming a hierarchy.  That includes the higher up interventions being increasingly disruptive to the group environment of the residential unit, being an increasingly heavy-handed display of the staff being in charge, and requiring more judgement and skill from staff so that the intervention de-escalates the situation rather than causing an escalation.  However, these ten interventions are not like a true hierarchy in that staff can start anywhere on the scale, can use the interventions in various combinations, and even that some of the interventions can be thought of as just examples of the other interventions. 

This episode goes on to take a closer look at three interventions at the bottom of the hierarchy: distraction, engaging, and verbal redirections.  Distraction is frequently the first intervention used for interrupting an emerging pattern of dysregulation.  Engaging is the most frequent intervention that should be used by residential staff in that it provides the kids with practice at co-regulating with a calmer and more psychologically and neurologically organized person.  Improved co-regulation skills leads to improved self-regulation skills.  Verbal Redirection is regularly used to support the development of kids’ self-awareness, and is frequently used with having kids Practice or Over-Practice a desired behavior and in combination with Listening Checks.  

This episode is the sixth on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway.  It’s also the third of a three-episode arc that focuses on how to structure an individual supervision meeting.  It also goes beyond the supervision meeting and explores the seven different roles Unit Supervisors have with their Supervisees.

1. As a Counselor, the Supervisor is concerned with the emotional well-being of their Supervisees.
2. As a Teacher, the Supervisor keeps a checklist of subjects (primarily policies, procedures, practices, and training topics) that are reviewed with each Supervisee over the course of their tenure as a direct-care Child Care Counselor.
3. As a Coach, the Supervisor individualizes their focus to address each Supervisee’s professional development.  Fundamental residential staff skills include Executive Skills, Engagement Skills, and Teamwork Skills.  More advanced counseling skills are the focus of the next episode arc on the Unit Supervisor Learning Pathway.
4. As a Leader, the Supervisor takes a strategic approach to presenting each supervisee with an inspiring vision, an analysis of current skills and a plan for what skills to work on in the next short-term period.  That plan is then implemented on the floor of the residential unit, directly in working with the kids.  In the next supervision meeting there’s feedback and collaboration around the next steps.
5. As an organizational Superior, the Supervisor has to represent the agency.  Any problems with basic employment expectations, such as professionalism, basic performance expectations, adherence to company policies, and dependability need to be addressed in the supervision meeting.  In consultation with the Unit Supervisor’s superior, and potentially H.R. department, it might be appropriate to take some personnel action.  Solid boundaries are the biggest help in balancing the role of Superior with the other Unit Supervisor roles.
6. As their Boss, the Supervisor has to give out assignments and coordinate a large number of tasks that all are necessary for the professional administration of the residential program.  In crisis situations, the Supervisor often times needs to function as a direct and clear Boss, which can create a balancing challenge with the other roles.
7. As a Mentor, the Supervisor expresses some level of interest in their Supervisees’ career and life outside of work.  It’s up to each Supervisee how much they will come to see their Supervisor as a Mentor, but spending some time relating as a Mentor helps balance the seven roles that define the relationship between a Unit Supervisor and their Supervisees.

This episode continues to present a model for how to structure a supervision meeting.  Last episode focused on how a Unit Supervisor sometimes functions primarily as a Counselor.  In that  sub-role, the Supervisor is most concerned with the emotional well-being of their Supervisees.  Although that can fill the entire supervision meeting, generally, after five to ten minutes the meeting agenda will usually move on to the Supervisor sub-role of functioning primarily as a Teacher.

Being an effective Teacher means having an organized curriculum that typically draws from your agency’s policies and procedures manual.  The Supervisor is tasked with making sure that each staff person has the necessary knowledge to properly implement the program.  Some of that can be addressed in staff meetings, however, because new staff are hired throughout the year, the supervision meeting serves as a place to individually make sure that every staff has the necessary familiarity with the program’s and the residential unit’s policies, procedures, practices, and philosophy of care and treatment.

However, the bulk of the supervision meeting time is typically best spent with the Supervisor in the sub-role of a Coach.  As a Coach, the Supervisor focuses on the skills that each staff person needs to excel at their job.  The fundamentals of residential care and treatment can be divided up into three categories:  Executive Skills, Engagement Skills, and Teamwork Skills.  Work on these skills, especially for newer staff is the foundation for their professional development as caregivers.

These fundamental skills are different than specific counseling skills that will be the focus of a future podcast episode.  Those counselor skills, such as Verbal Redirection, Labeling, Change of Environment, Limit Setting, Forced Choice, Weighted Choice, and Centering Breaks are treatment skills that will also need coaching to learn and master.  However, the use of fundamental skills (Executive Skills, Engagement Skills, and Teamwork Skills) are a great place for a Unit Supervisor to start with coaching since their use will create a therapeutic environment on the residential unit. 

Today’s episode, which is the fourth on the Unit Supervisory Learning Pathway, focuses on a model for how to structure the typical supervision session. In the context of working on a residential treatment unit for children and youth, there are many sub-roles that define an effective relationship between a supervisor and their supervisees.  A Supervisor encompasses the roles of Counselor, Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor.  This episode focuses on starting supervision meetings with the Supervisor focuses on the role of Counselor.  In that role, the Supervisor is most concerned about the emotional well-being of the direct-care staff being supervised.  

This initial focus on emotional wellness, which starts with simply asking a person how they’re doing this week, makes sense as a basic display of good social skills.  However, the Counselor sub-role goes far beyond good manners and tries to attend to helping your Supervisees manage the high level of exposure to traumatic stress that is a big part of their jobs.  Just expressing concern helps.  Beyond that, there will be times when engaging in psychological debriefing will be an appropriate way to help your Supervisees take the edge off of the more stressful encounters they’ve had that week.  Attending to the basic human emotional needs of your Supervisees also means trying to help them find inspiration and meaning in the work, celebrating their successes, and reinforcing examples of their good teamwork and their demonstrating strong executive skills in their work.

Sometimes, it makes sense to spend an entire supervision meeting primarily in that Counselor sub-role.  However, that should be the exception and not the rule.  Supervision meeting time is incredible valuable and a skilled Supervisor consciously designs their supervision time to be strategic about how many minutes to devote to the domain of emotions, before moving on to the other sub-roles (Teacher, Coach, Leader, Superior, Boss, and Mentor) that are also essential aspects of being an effective Supervisor.  

Now in its second season, the Becoming Centered Podcast has been a way for me to share my understanding of residential treatment for children and youth. It’s allowed me to present an integration of clinical and business perspectives that I’ve acquired over the past 40+ years of working as a residential counselor, supervisor, director, and therapist. With the most recent podcast, Becoming Centered has now reached the 2000 mark for downloads! This season presents two learning pathways. The Processing Pathway focuses on how to help kids learn from incidents of using problem-behaviors, and ultimately how to improve their own self-regulation skills. The Unit Supervisor Pathway focuses on the managerial skills needed to effectively run a residential unit and on how to provide effective supervision to super-charge the professional development of direct-care staff. It mirrors consultation work I’m doing at a relatively large residential program providing care and treatment services to hundreds of kids every year. I hope you’ll help spread the word about the Becoming Centered Podcast to other residential treatment professionals and help spread the use of respectful, caring, and effective techniques for transforming the lives of kids who face heroic challenges in their lives. A sincere thank you to all my listeners!

This episode, the third in the Unit Supervisor Pathway, focuses on the essential managerial skills of effectively delegating tasks and projects and keeping organized. I’m hoping that you’ve already followed advice in previous episodes and created clearly defined Unit Coordinator roles for all the residential staff on the unit. Residential treatment is a team sport; and you need every member of your team to not only work directly with the kids, but to also help administer a quality program. However, even with clear role descriptions outlining various administrative and operational responsibilities, a Unit Supervisor still has to become effective at verbally delegating tasks and projects. Effective delegation will make a huge difference with how many tasks and projects the residential team can simultaneously be addressing, a huge difference in the quality and timeliness of task completion, and a huge difference in how direct-care staff are lead in developing their professional skills. This episode presents a 5-step model for effective delegation. Now that you’ve delegated scores of tasks and projects, a Unit Supervisor has to keep all these tasks, deliverables, projects, and deadlines organized. This is a major way in which a Unit Supervisor sets up their people for success!

Episode 46 of the Becoming Centered Podcast is now available. This episode focuses on the essential managerial and coaching skill of giving feedback to others. Individual supervision and individual coaching is, by far, the most effective way to inspire and guide the professional development of direct care child care counselors. This individual attention is much more powerful than in-service training, articles, podcasts, or other ways to train staff. The heart of coaching is being able to give feedback to supervisees in a way that effectively influences how a staff person thinks about their work, how they feel about their efforts and experience, and how they develop their own executive skills and counseling skills. Giving feedback to others, in a way that the other person can process and incorporate into their own professional development, is both a core leadership skill and is very difficult to do. Defensiveness when receiving feedback is normal and natural. In this podcast I set out to raise the listeners awareness of techniques for compensating for that normal level of defensiveness and techniques for making positive feedback more sophisticated and effective.

In residential treatment programs by far the most effective way to train direct-care staff in how to effectively care for the kids and to provide counseling is through on-the-job coaching and individual supervision.  However, there’s a lot of very real barriers to providing quality supervision.

The nature of the work, especially at more intensive programs, means that there is a high frequency of behavior-problems on the residential unit.  This drives staff toward a short-term focus on getting through the shift, or perhaps through the week, with as few safety issues as possible.  The kids needs are essentially infinite and supervisory staff easily get pulled into intervening with the children and youth and just trying to provide all the care they need.

The first managerial challenge to providing quality supervision involves carving out the time for a supervisor and a direct care staff person to regularly meet in an office, away from the kids.  I advocate for staff responsible for unit supervision to devote at least four hours per week to providing individual supervision.  The best way to do that is to delegate as many routine administrative tasks to direct care staff as is possible.  The best way to achieve that level of delegation is to clearly define unit coordinator and other roles. 

This approach both frees up time for unit supervisors to provide coaching and supervision, and provides real training to direct care counselors in how to organize and implement various components of the residential program, from keeping track of hygiene supplies, to designing and scheduling activities, to planning birthday celebrations, and hundreds of other necessary parts to running a quality residential treatment unit.

Episode 44 of the Becoming Centered podcast presents the third installment of the Processing Pathway, covering the technique known as “chaining.”  Chaining is a great way to add a visual element to cognitive processing.  It lays out a series of links representing a chain of behaviors and feelings that led to a child or youth having to be separated from their peers.  Once the sequence of links has been clarified, the key link that represents a realistic “choice point” is identified.  This link represents the point in the sequence where the client could have made a different choice that likely would have resulted in a better outcome.  Typical choice point behaviors include things like, asking for a check-in, asking to take space, or using some established coping mechanism.  An explanatory handout and illustration is available at https://www.bearclanllc.com/podcasts/the-processing-pathway/.