Clinical Supervision across Australia, Türkiye, Syria, and Bangladesh: From WEIRD to WONDERFUL

Abstract

Background: Clinical supervision in providing mental health and psychosocial support services (MHPSSs) is an ethical imperative and a key to ensuring quality of care in terms of service users’ skills enhancement, well-being, and satisfaction. However, humanitarian contexts in low-resource countries usually lack sufficient infrastructures to ensure staff have access to supervision. Against this backdrop, a pilot supervision program was introduced in Bangladesh and Syria to help MHPSS staff provide quality care. However, supervision provided by experts unfamiliar with these contexts decontextualizes the supervision process and hinders cultural relevance. The aim of this paper is to present a decolonial model of supervision called “WONDERFUL Supervision”. Methods: We provided fortnightly online supervision to a total of 32 MHPSS practitioners (seven in Bangladesh and twenty-five in Syria) working in humanitarian contexts in Bangladesh and Syria as well as their surrounding countries (such as Türkiye) between 2019 and 2021.The issues talked about were the skills needed for the practitioners to provide optimal levels of service, manage staff burnout, and present cases. Focus group discussions and reflective discussions included 19 participants, involving both practitioners and supervisors across sites. Results: Despite some notable effects, the supervision was obstructed due to being decontextualized, such as the supervisors not having adequate knowledge about the contexts and culture of beneficiaries, a perceived feeling of power imbalance, practitioners having limited access to resources (e.g., internet connection and technical support), and different time zones. This defect paves the way for a new mode of supervision, WONDERFUL, which takes into account contextual factors and other sociocultural aspects. Conclusions: WONDERFUL supervision has the potential to indigenize the concept of clinical supervision and thereby more sustainably and effectively ensure quality mental health care in resource-limited countries, especially in humanitarian contexts.