Dr Christine Loft1, Ms Mandy Taylor1
1Eastern Health, Box Hill, Melbourne, Australia
Biography:
Dr Chrissie Loft is a registered Clinical Psychologist, and Psychology Clinical Educator in public health at Eastern Health, offering group and individual supervision and training to the Psychology and Allied Health workforce. She is also Lecturer and Course Coordinator at the University of Melbourne’s Centre for Youth Mental Health and at Orygen, a world leading Research and Knowledge Translation organisation, specialising in teaching of Youth Mental Health.
Abstract:
Dr Loft has over 15 years of clinical experience working with young people and families experiencing mental ill health, alongside the supervision of training and registered mental health professionals.
We have seen increasing mental health concerns globally, signally calls for investment and expansion of developmentally appropriate therapeutic services to support wellbeing and recovery (McGorry et al., 2022).
The rise in need for care has placed pressure on under resourced services to meet these demands within current organisational structures, increasing clinicians’ experiences of work-placed pressure and reducing wellbeing (Patel et al., 2021). Reflective supervision has been highlighted as critical in addressing burnout, supporting the management of workloads and improving wellbeing in the workplace (Sadusky & Spinks, 2022).
Reflective group supervision aims to empower the supervisee presenting their work and creatively engage with other group members to explore alternative, broader narratives from which change can be made (Proctor, 1997). This model was implemented across 3 cohorts of Psychologists and Clinical Psychologists within mental health services for young people and adults at a large public health organisation. Supervisees' reflections on their experience of group will be presented, alongside their perspectives on the impact this has had on their capacity to provide quality care for young people accessing mental health services. Consideration of learnings which can be applied to future supervision practice in these settings will be discussed.