Core competencies in advanced training: what supervisors say about graduate training

In an attempt to identify needed mental health skills, many professional organizations have or are in the process of establishing core competency standards for their professions. The AAMFT identified 128 core competencies for the independent practice of MFT. The aim of this study was to learn the opinions of AAMFT Approved Supervisors as to how well prepared postgraduate trainees are when compared to the core competencies. One hundred thirty-five AAMFT Approved Supervisors provided their perspectives on (a) which competencies are most commonly learned in MFT graduate programs, (b) how well the graduates have mastered these competencies, and (c) the level to which the supervisors need the competencies to be mastered prior to entering advanced training. Results suggest that a gap exists between the level of mastery that the postgraduate trainees exhibit and the level desired by supervisors. Implications are suggested for closing this gap.     

Trends in family therapy supervision: the past 25 years and into the future

This investigation repeats a survey of American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) Approved Supervisors done in 1976 and 1986. Despite negative contemporary contextual influences, the AAMFT Approved Supervisor credential is still attractive to the same percentage of the AAMFT clinical membership as formerly and reflects in general the demographic characteristics of marriage and family therapists (MFTs) in clinical practice. Across the last quarter century there has been a steady increase in female AAMFT Approved Supervisors and those with terminal master's degrees. These and other trends are discussed with a view toward what supervision is becoming and what it needs to become.     

Social Constructionism and Supervision: Experiences of AAMFT Supervisors and Supervised Therapists

A phenomenological research process was used to investigate the supervision experience for supervisors and therapists when supervisors use a social constructionist perspective. Participants of the one‐to‐one interviews were six AAMFT Approved Supervisors and six therapists providing counseling to individuals, couples and families. The findings suggest supervisors were committed to their self‐identified supervision philosophy and intentionally sought out congruence between epistemology and practice. The shared experience of therapists indicates they associated desirable supervision experiences with their supervisors’ social constructionist perspective. Our findings also indicated that supervisors’ and therapists’ understanding of social constructionism included the more controversial concepts of agency and extra‐discursiveness. This research has taken an empirical step in the direction of understanding what the social constructionist supervision experience is like for supervisors and therapists. Our findings suggest a linkage between epistemology and supervision practice and a satisfaction with the supervision process.     

THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS OF SUPERVISORY SYSTEMS: A MODIFIED DELPHI STUDY

Few empirical data exist to demonstrate the efficacy of marriage and family therapy (MFT) training and supervision. In order to lay the foundation for a comprehensive model of MFT supervision and faciliate supervisory precess research, variables improtant to the outcome of MFT supervision were identified. A panel of AAMFT Approved Supervisors generated 771 variables thougth to be essential to superisory outcome and rate 398 of these variables as very improtant to the outcome of MFT supervision. The variables were collapsed into five categories and further divided into 37 conceptual clusters. The existing superisory literature tht supports the results of the study and implications of the study are discussed.     

A Curriculum for Graduate-Level Marriage and Family Therapy Education*

The Delphi technique of refining group opinion was used to develop a graduate level marriage and family therapy curriculum. Opinions were synthesized from a national panel of 20 AAMFT Approved Supervisors and 25 training directors of graduate-level marriage and family therapy programs. Three rounds of questionnaires were employed and 101 content areas met the criteria for inclusion into the final curriculum. Discussed are the similarities and differences of this curriculum and the current “model” AAMFT curriculum. It is hoped that the curriculum devised from this study will lead to the continued rethinking, refinement, and evolution of marriage and family therapy education.     

THE AAMFT-HEAD START TRAINING PARTNERSHIP PROJECT: ENHANCING MFT CAPACITIES BEYOND THE FAMILY SYSTEM

This paper summarizes the experience of a two-year project to promote partnerships between 12 graduate Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT) training programs and their 12 local Head Start partners. The American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) awarded 9 grants to MFT-Head Start partnerships that had established relationships with each other prior to the project. Three MFT-Head Start pairs that had no preexisting relationship but wanted to develop one received planning grants. The partnership project provided an exciting opportunity for MFT faculty and interns to integrate family systems theory into larger organizational settings and to enhance the capacity of MFTs to serve disadvantaged, low-income, culturally diverse families and the community agencies that work with them. Preparing MFT students to intervene and respond systemically both in organizations and with the families they serve represents a viable alternative to more traditional approaches to MFT that limit the focus to the family system. Survey results and interview data reflect the rich experiences of MFT faculty and supervisors, MFT interns, and Head Start staff. Implementation issues are discussed and recommendations are made to improve the collaboration between MFTs and community-based agencies such as Head Start.     

Basic family therapy skills, I: conceptualization and initial findings

This is the first report on a program of research designed to identify the most important characteristics of the beginning marriage and family therapist. The paper first surveys the literature in family therapy, social work, and psychology and finds that, although these factors are discussed for beginning psychotherapists, no set of skills are derived empirically. This study recruited all available members of the American Family Therapy Association (AFTA) and Approved Supervisors of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) who were experienced educators and trainers of family therapists. After nominating the most important generic-type characteristics for beginning family therapists, the participants rated the items, yielding a list of not only the most important skills, but also personal traits of beginners based on mean scores of the ratings. The final section of the paper discusses the implications of these findings and notes the current and future activities of the research program.     

ACCREDITATION: WHAT CONSTITUTES APPROPRIATE MARRIAGE AND FAMILY THERAPY EDUCATION?*

This study compared the mail questionnaire responses of 132 training directors and 79 clinical members of the American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT). The findings about preferred criteria for accreditation, training requirements, and attitudes toward major professional issues suggested several key differences between training directors and clinical members, as well as important similarities. These divergent and convergent trends are described and discussed.     

The Condensed MFT Core Competencies: A Streamlined Approach for Measuring Student and Supervisee Learning Using the MFT Core Competencies

In this article, the authors present a condensed version of the Marriage and Family Therapy Core Competencies (MFT-CC), collapsing the original 128 MFT-CC to 16 using a qualitative research method. Educators, supervisors, and researchers can more easily and efficiently use the condensed MFT-CC to measure student and supervisee learning for accreditation and training. The 16 Condensed MFT-CC are mapped to the original MFT-CC, COAMFTE's Version 12 Foundational Curriculum Areas and the Association for Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards 6 domains upon which the national exam is predicated.     

Clinical Practice Patterns of Canadian Couple/Marital/Family Therapists

This clinical practice pattern survey had two unique aspects. It was a national survey of American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) members in Canada that included all AAMFT membership categories, including student, affiliate, associate, clinical, and supervisor. It compared practice pattern data for clinical members from Canada and the United States. The results also showed that students, affiliates, and associates are very interested in identifying who they are as C/MFTs and that they are receiving various types of training. Clinical members in both Canada and the United States are fairly similar in terms of demographics and therapy practice, except when it comes to the models they identify as most influential. Future client satisfaction and outcome research is needed to determine how clients are specifically benefiting from therapy.     

EAP Referral Training and Supervisor's Beliefs About Troubled Workers

This study was designed to investigate the relationship between EAP referral training and supervisors' interactions with troubled workers. Using a field survey, self-report, retrospective methodology, 224 industrial supervisors' beliefs about impaired employees were examined in connection with the former group's participation in constructive confrontation training and their attitudes toward EAPs. In general, based on Bayer and Gerstein's (1988a) Bystander-Equity Model of Supervisory Helping Behavior, it was predicted that supervisors who had attended training and/or held positive attitudes toward their EAP would report more welldeveloped beliefs about troubled workers than persons who had not received training and/or held negative attitudes toward their EAP. Overall, our results provided support for the idea that constructive confrontation training enhances supervisors' recognition of impaired employees. While we anticipated this finding, we did not expect supervisors to report that their attitudes toward their EAP were unrelated to their beliefs about troubled persons. Alternative explanations for why supervisors behaved differently from what we had anticipated are offered, as are suggestions for how to conduct research on other aspects of the supervisor-impaired worker identification process.     

A statewide introduction of trauma-informed care in a child welfare system

Most children in the care of the child welfare system have been exposed to multiple traumas in addition to the stressor of being removed from their home. Because the risk for mental health problems following exposure to trauma is high, a critical need exists to introduce trauma-informed practices into the child welfare system. The purpose of this study is to evaluate initial stages of a trauma-informed training program for the Arkansas Division of Child and Family Services (DCFS). In Phase 1, 102 (75%) of DCFS area directors and supervisors participated in 10 regional, two-day workshops modeled after the National Child and Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) trauma-informed training for child welfare. Pre- and post-training evaluations demonstrated significant improvements in participants' knowledge of trauma-informed practices. A three-month follow-up with directors and supervisors indicated that use of trauma-informed practices increased significantly and that such changes were correlated with pre- versus post-training improvement in knowledge. Most participants were able to partially implement action steps established at the time of training; however, a number of barriers were cited as preventing full implementation, including time constraints, heavy caseloads, lack of staff, and limited resources. Results are discussed in light of plans under way for Phase II training for all DCFS front-line staff.     

Reliability and Validity of the Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF) in a Psychiatric Family Therapy Clinic

The reliability and validity of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-IV Global Assessment of Relational Functioning (GARF) was evaluated in consenting participants presenting to a family therapy training clinic. The purpose of this study was to (a) assess whether the GARF could be administered quickly in a marriage and family therapy training clinic, (b) assess the inter-rater and internal reliability of GARF ratings of intake sessions, (c) examine the relationship of GARF ratings to established measures of relationship functioning, and (d) compare GARF ratings to a measure of depressive symptoms. Study participants completed the General Functioning Subscale of the Family Assessment Device (GFS/FAD), the Quality of Marriage Index (QMI), and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies–Depression Scale (CES-D). After intake sessions were conducted with study participants, GARF ratings were made by an American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy Approved Supervisor or Supervisor-in-Training, a therapist trainee, and two observing trainees who had observed the session from behind a one-way mirror. Cronbach’s coefficient alphas and the average intraclass correlation coefficients were both .82 when ratings of the supervisor and two observers were compared and .78 and .79, respectively, when ratings of the supervisor, two observers, and therapist were evaluated. There was significant agreement between GARF ratings made by the supervisor and therapist (but not observers) and scores on the GFS/FAD, QMI, and CES-D. Results suggest that GARF ratings can be made quickly and reliably, especially among raters with greater clinical experience, and are related to measures of relational functioning and depression. Implications for research and marriage and family therapy training are discussed.     

AAMFT ETHICAL CODE: "DUAL RELATIONSHIPS"

The current American Association for Marriage and Family Therapy (AAMFT) Code of Ethical Principles prohibits an apparently wide, but vaguely defined, range of nonsexual, and presumably nonromantic dual relationships between therapists and clients, supervisers, employees and students. We suggest that this extension of the dual relationship prohibition is undesirable, for a variety of reasons. The most important of these is that attempting to make relationships simple by legislation, rather than dealing with inevitable complexity, prepares students poorly for the work they must do. Instead, we propose that training and supervision include serious emphasis on relationship complexity, and issues of exploitation and power, within the therapy relationship and within the training program or supervision itself.     

An Analysis of AAMFT Supervisors: Their Identities,Roles, and Resources*

This paper reports data from a comprehensive study of AAMFT approved supervisors. It reviews findings on a variety of demographic variables and identifies significant relationships between these data and patterns of supervisory attitudes and procedures. The discussion presents a demographic profile of the approved supervisors with an analysis of their supervisory models and resources, the extent of their professional activities, and the issue of adjunctive personal psychotherapy for students in clinical training.