Supervision and mentorship are relationships for learning. In the world of professional practice with infants, toddlers and their families, supervision and mentorship provide regular opportunities for individuals and groups, less experienced and more experienced, in training and service settings, to reflect together about their hands-on work.

Just as services to support the development of infants, toddlers and their families take many forms, so do the supervision and mentorship arrangements designed to support the development of practitioners in this field. Indeed, the terms "supervision" and "mentorship" themselves are understood very differently across the disciplines and service systems that work with young children and their families.

In 1991-92, a multidisciplinary work group convened by ZERO TO THREE/National Center for Clinical Infant Programs and supported by the Center for the Future of Children of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, examined supervision and mentorship in the context of the range of practice with infants, toddlers and their families. As we tried to describe and demystify supervision and mentorship, we looked at both differences and similarities across disciplines and settings. We have discovered that experienced administrators, trainers, and practitioners seem to agree on the essential features of effective supervision and mentorship in this field. These are:

• reflection;
• collaboration; and
• regularity.

In this essay, we describe and discuss reflection, and the collaboration and regularity that support reflection, as essential features of supervision and mentorship in infant family training and practice. Before doing so, however, we address the special characteristics of infant family practice that make supervision and mentorship essential for delivery of high quality services and that make these relationships particularly appropriate vehicles for teaching and learning in this field.

To use one's individual talents fully in work with infants, toddlers and their families is no easy task. Such work engages the emotions as fully as the intellect.

The special characteristics of infant/family practice

Work with infants, toddlers and their families takes many forms in this country. These forms are constantly evolving. The health care system touches virtually all infants and mothers, however fleetingly. Some form of out-of-home child care is part of the experience of a majority of infants, toddlers, and families. Early intervention services for very young children with special needs and their families are becoming increasingly widespread. Formal and informal family resource programs, of widely varying size, scope, and sponsorship, flourish in many communities. Infant mental health services are provided by private practitioners, free-standing or institutionally based clinics, or consultants to other service settings. Community planners, federal and state administrators, and private foundations are experimenting with service system changes designed to address effectively the multiple, often complex needs of families with young children. One consequence of this diversity is that people who work with infants, toddlers and their families come from a range of professional and nonprofessional backgrounds, may or may not have been trained specifically to work with young children and/or families, and are certain, in the course of their careers, to encounter novel challenges.

During the last half-decade, a consensus has been developing around principles that lead to quality in infant family programs. Such principles are reflected, among other places, in accreditation standards for service programs and for professionals, in field based program evaluation and longitudinal research, and in the specifications of requests for proposals issued by federal and state agencies serving diverse populations of infants, toddlers, and their families. Thoughtful front-line practitioners and administrators in the field are likely to agree that:

• Services for infants, toddlers and their families must be specially designed for this population in order to be developmentally appropriate. They cannot be scaled-down versions of programs for older children.
• Infants and toddlers must be understood and served within the context of their families.
• Families are the constants in a child's life; the job of the professional is to assist families in supporting the child's development.
• Services to infants, toddlers and their families must be individualized to respect and build on unique constitutional, developmental, and cultural characteristics.
• Service coordination should be available to ease families' access to the range of services they require.
• Policy and practice should recognize and build on the capacities, resilience, and resourcefulness of children and families.

The extent to which such principles are actually applied in a service program or institution depends to a large extent on the competence of staff. Competence, in turn, depends on the skill, commitment, and personal qualities of front-line practitioners. It also depends on the ability of program designers, administrators, and managers to enable front-line practitioners to use their individual talents fully and to work effectively together.

To use one's individual talents fully in work with infants, toddlers and their families is no easy task. Such work engages the emotions as fully as the intellect. Very young children stir powerful feelings in adults (the species is programmed that way). Moreover, parents and parent-child interaction evoke complex responses in professionals that are often difficult to sort out and respond to in ways that support the parent, the child, and the relationships between them. The practitioner must learn to take advantage of her individual skills and gifts. She must also become more aware of aspects of her work that are troublesome also become more aware of aspects of her work that are troublesome-including areas she is prone to overlook. She must come to terms with the realization that no single individual can possibly meet all the professional demands she is likely to encounter in working with children from birth to three and their families.

The infant/family practitioner is likely to encounter large caseloads, physical demands, paperwork, inadequate resources within and beyond her work setting, and expectable tensions among colleagues. She will have to find ways to cope with these current realities of infant family practice, or ways to change them.

The very words and phrases that we have used to describe responses to the challenges of work with infants, toddlers and their families - "sort out," "become aware," "cope," "realize" - suggest that reflective practice is a key element of "best" practice in our field. We suggest further that the job of enabling students and practitioners to become reflective professionals can be accomplished, in large part, by collaborative, regular supervision and mentorship.

Supervision and mentorship: More than temporary relief from distress

Efforts to implement principles of best practice in work with infants, toddlers, and their families yield a host of daily, emotionally charged dilemmas for service providers and administrators. Comments around the coffee pot or copy machine are revealing:

"I went to school to learn to work with children - not babies, and not parents."

"I'm the only 'baby person' here."

"1 have so many families to see that I can't be really helpful to any of them."

"I couldn't say anything about the baby's language development, the way I had planned to in this month's home visit, because Mrs. P. never stopped talking about Mr. P."

"When Mr. and Mrs. P. were finally ready to take Joey for an assessment at Mercy, their so-called team of experts talked down to the P's and acted as if I were invisible. I'd like to murder the whole multidisciplinary crew."

"I have so much stuff to enter into the computer that I can't see my families."

"I just got back from the Q's house. How could a human being let a baby suffer so? I don't see how I can go back there."

'Copy machine commiseration' may offer temporary relief from discomfort caused by limitations in professional training, changing job demands, and the inevitable stresses of working with people. In contrast to casual support, supervision and mentorship offer ongoing opportunities to recognize, understand, and cope successfully with the challenges of becoming an infant/family practitioner - just as practitioners offer opportunities for support and growth to parents, and parents to children. Supervisory and mentorship relationships embody what some call the golden rule of supervision: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto others."

Supervisory and mentoring relationships provide opportunities for the individual participant to:

• Deepen and broaden knowledge;
• Reflect regularly, in a safe environment, on the full range of reactions to the experience of practice;
• Discuss individual goals and measure progress toward them;
• Develop and refine one's professional use of self and individual style, through increased self-understanding;
• Examine the philosophy that underlies an approach to infants, toddlers and their families, as it is expressed in the policies and practices of a professional discipline or service setting; and
• Learn from a more experienced practitioner who describes why and how she works as she does-and discusses both successes and failures in. the course of her own professional development.

Supervisory and mentorship relationships provide opportunities for educators and administrators to:

• Model a mutually respectful, collaborative approach to monitoring performance and maintaining an acceptable level of service to children and families;
• Model a mutually respectful, collaborative relationship that parallels the supervisee/family relationship;
• Offer information and instruction that are relevant to the individual learner's level of professional development and immediate practice needs;
• Support individual practitioners, particularly as they deal with the stressful aspects of work with infants, toddlers and their families; and
• Create and maintain an overall climate of intellectual inquiry, open communication, empathy with staff concerns, and support for the long-term professional development of staff.

A note of caution must be sounded here. People who have had satisfying experiences as a supervisee or supervisor, protegee or mentor, value these relationships highly. One seasoned administrator of a large, multiservice agency calls supervision "the greatest gift I can give my staff." A student reflects that supervision by a mentor teacher helped her to "take on experience in a manageable chunk." But people who have not had positive personal experience with reflective, collaborative, regular supervisory or mentoring relationships often, quite literally, "don't know what they are missing." They may think of supervision as, at worst, "checking up on," and, at best, measuring the adequacy of performance against some fixed list of competencies.

In addition, people who work with infants and toddlers are often victims of the myth that working with babies should "come naturally" - at least to women. This idea may account for the belief that extensive training is unnecessary for effective practice with infants, toddlers and their families. It may explain the sense, common among infant/family practitioners, that they should dismiss or be ashamed of feelings toward infants or parents that reflect anything other than a wish to help. It may mean that when a supervisor encourages a trainee to explore new ways of responding to a baby or family, this encouragement is seen as a judgment that the worker lacks some expectable skill or information, and as a threat to the supervisee's basic self-esteem and sense of security.

Simply to label as 'misperceptions' such widely and deeply held beliefs about supervision is not likely to diminish their influence upon either practice or policy. An alternative way of perceiving the supervisory or mentoring experience and relationship must be offered. We hope that our effort to identify core features of supervision and mentorship as they occur in the specific context of work with infants, toddlers and their families will be a first step in such an approach.

Essential features of supervision and mentorship in infant/family training and practice

The knowledge and skills of many professional disciplines find a place in the wide range of settings that serve infants, toddlers and their families. Similarly, different traditions of supervision and mentorship are being adapted for use in training and practice in our multidisciplinary field. It is important to recognize that a variety of supervisory and mentoring models may offer similar opportunities to staff for learning and reflection. At the same time, identical terms-including "supervision' and "mentorship" themselves-may have quite different meanings, depending on discipline and setting.

In the midst of all this diversity, many experienced administrators, trainers, and practitioners seem to agree that reflection, collaboration, and regularity are the essential features of effective supervision and mentorship in infant/family training and practice.

Reflection

Reflection can be thought of as both the means and the end of the process of supervision. Reflection involves stepping back from the immediate, intense experience of hands-on work. Depending on the "contract" she establishes with her supervisors, the supervisee provides material for mutual consideration-written process notes from a meeting with a child and family, an oral narrative, a curriculum or treatment plan, behavior recorded on audiotape or videotape or observed directly by the supervisor. The supervisor or mentor offers an enlarged perspective, another pair of eyes, a mirror. From the dialogue between supervisee and supervisor emerges, one hopes, a clearer vision of the work in progress.

Reflection means continuing conceptualization of what one is observing and doing. It is required of the supervisor or mentor as well as of the student or less experienced practitioner. "What were you thinking about when you did that?" is a question that either partner in a supervisory or monitoring relationship can ask the other, and that the experienced practitioner continually asks herself. Consequently, the first step in learning to be a supervisor often involves articulating the principles underlying one's own practice - for example, why does one set up the physical environment this way? What are the advantages and disadvantages of visiting weekly instead of monthly (or monthly instead of weekly)? What is one looking for and wondering about as one seems (to the trainee) to be saying or doing so little? Why does one learn from paying attention to one's emotional responses to working with individual children and families? The more supervisors or mentors are able to conceptualize their own practice, the better prepared they are to help trainees understand principles and formulate possible solutions to the challenges at hand.

Sometimes, of course, reflection fails to yield clarity. Experienced supervisors often say that one of the chief benefits of supervision is an increased tolerance for ambiguity, even for helplessness. People who are drawn to work with infants, toddlers and their families want to help if not to heal-to do something. Virtually all trainees underestimate the value of the relationship itself, of "being there" for and with a child and family. It is the supervisor or mentor who listens to the frustrated trainee and can say, "This is really complicated. I'm not sure what I would do in these circumstances. It will get clearer as you continue with the family. We do know that you are an important presence in their life." Because supervision and mentorship are processes and relationships, not sequences or courses of instruction, such difficult messages, and others, can be delivered repeatedly, as "teachable moments" present themselves and as supervisors and mentors "are there" for students and workers.

Reflection in the course of supervision and mentorship helps the trainee come to terms with what it means to go beyond doing what "comes naturally" to help babies or parents to become a professional who works with infants, toddlers and their families. Part of the process of developing a professional identity involves recognizing the need to enlarge one's own knowledge, skills, and sensitivity. Supervisors and mentors can direct the trainee to relevant materials and demonstrate, or even role play specific techniques. They can help supervisees develop skills in observing infants, toddlers, and their families and in using their observations in responsive, reflective practice. The diverse demands of infant/family work make experiences with supervisors and mentors from a range of disciplines and traditions particularly useful for the trainee. Indeed, transdisciplinary practice in early intervention requires that colleagues be able to teach their perspectives and skills to each other.

Supervisors and mentors need to resolve their own conflicts about exercising authority before they can establish clear expectations for their students or employees.

It is important to remember, however, that many students and practitioners find it much easier to ask for information or technical advice than to reflect on the feelings they experience as they work with babies and families. Supervisors and mentors can reinforce (or introduce) the idea that emotions are the basic stuff of parents' and children's relationships. By attending to her own affective experience, the worker may be able to learn more about what children and families are feeling. As the supervisee's own emotional responses are acknowledged and respected, she may become increasingly able to acknowledge, respect, and respond sensitively to the emotional experiences and expressions of infants, toddlers, families and colleagues.

Reflecting on professional identity also involves examining values. The complexities of daily practice may bring the student or worker face to face with conflicts between competing priorities, clashes between traditional and innovative approaches; policies that seem to disregard or undermine the well-being of young children or families, and evidence that her own work is not valued. In the words of one veteran administrator, "In this field, you have to fight so hard to do what you love, and the world out there isn't even sure what you're doing." Supervisors and mentors can help trainees shape questions with which to probe and ponder their own behavior, beliefs, and values, as well as those of the programs, institutions, and service systems in which they are working. Such discussions, of course, may prompt supervisors and mentors to thoughtful reflection and change as well. One area involving behaviors, beliefs and values that represents a source of conflict for many supervisors and administrators - especially women - concerns the exercise of authority. Supervisors and mentors need to resolve their own conflicts about exercising authority before they can establish clear expectations for their students or employees.

It takes time to feel comfortable with a professional identity, just as it takes time to "become" a student, a colleague, a parent or a spouse. Supervisors and mentors can provide a relationship and an environment in which the trainee's professional identity can emerge gradually, until what once seemed "tacked on" becomes a core part of the trainee's sense of self.

How does one learn to reflect? Some educators suggest preparing students early on to use the experience of supervision or mentorship. In the classroom, teachers can encourage students to question conventional wisdom and their own thinking and decision making. In supervised practice or internships, supervisors and mentors can take time to discover what each trainee brings to this hands-on training, in order to guide and support the supervisee's reflection. Program managers and administrators encourage reflection in the work setting not only by providing opportunities for individual supervision but also by encouraging thoughtful, open communication in daily activity. As the experienced practitioner acquires and values the habit of reflection, the process comes full circle - the reflective practitioner prepares to observe the supervisor or mentor.

Collaboration

The experience of supervision or mentorship in work with infants, toddlers and their families has been described as like "having a friend on a difficult journey." As practitioners who work in a wide range of settings talk about the "rich and troubling" intellectual and emotional challenges they face, they speak of their field as a "frontier." No one knows for sure what lies ahead; new information pours in, but may be unreliable; the strategies of early pioneers may or may not be appropriate for those who wish to establish permanent settlements. One doesn't want to travel through uncharted territory alone.

Supervision has also been described as offering "the occasional bliss of the collaborative state." While we believe that the development of close professional relationships may be one of the most rewarding aspects of working in our new and challenging field, we must admit that "bliss" is likely to be only "occasional" in any human relationship. But nourishing, enduring, rewarding, "good enough" collaborative supervisory and mentoring relationships can become established parts of any training or work environment - if we recognize the foundations upon which such relationships are built. These elements, which are not unique to infant/family work, are power, mutual expectations, and communication.

Power in a collaborative relationship is shared power. In supervisory and mentorship relationships in the infant/family field, power derives from knowledge, not just experience or conviction. Just as a parent s the expert on his or her own child, so he supervisee is the authority on her own work experience. In addition, the supervisee or protegee brings to a relationship his or her life experience as child and perhaps as a parent, as a participant in at least one culture and perhaps as an observer of others, and is a member of racial and gender groups. Not uncommonly, the supervisee or protegee will have academic or clinical expertise that is directly relevant to work with infants, toddlers and their families and that surpasses that of the supervisor or mentor in at least some areas. This will certainly be the case in peer supervision arrangements, which depend in large part on the pooling of expertise and the contribution of different perspectives to common understanding. Power can be held mutually without being hared equally. Supervisors of students are likely to be responsible for evaluating the supervisee's performance and growth; supervisors in service settings may have specific responsibility within the organization for assuring the quality of services provided to children and families. But when the evaluative function is shared, however, the process of reflection encourages ongoing self-evaluation by the supervisee. Periodic formal evaluations become occasions for a systematic review of what have been continuing conversations between supervisor and supervisee. Again, as in family life or a therapeutic relationship, one hopes to see shifts in the balance of power over time. With experience comes movement from greater dependence on authority to fuller autonomy (although "interdependence" rather than an illusory "independence" should be the lifelong goal of the infant/family professional).

Clear mutual expectations seem to be critical to the success of a collaborative supervisory or mentoring relationship. The supervisory "contract" clarifies the boundaries and responsibilities of each participant in this unique relationship. Participants need to agree on the logistics of their arrangement - where and when they will meet. They need to agree on the content that they will look at together - this might include on-the-job performance, directly observed; written notes of interactions with children and families; an oral account of the trainee's experience with children, families, colleagues; reflection on the supervisory relationship itself.

Some disciplines use a model of regular, formal cycles in which supervisor and supervisee together negotiate planning, observation, analysis, and critique of performance. In other models, the supervisor tries informally to learn as much as she can about the supervisee early in the relationship, and freely discloses her own clinical experience. Mutual candor and trust are expected to facilitate the kind of highly interactive discussion that makes supervision or mentorship "not a course, but a process." Observations, ideas, feelings, connections, questions, and recurring themes are all welcomed as part of an unfolding, deeply meaningful, and mutually built conversation. Even (or, perhaps, especially) in this type of supervisory relationship, there must be clear mutual understanding about the boundaries and distinctions between supervision and friendship, and supervision and therapy. And the supervisory "contract" may need to be re-negotiated periodically.

In some circumstances, expectations must be clarified among three parties. In the context of a student practicum or internship, for example, roles and responsibilities must be established for the student intern, the field supervisor, and the faculty member or academic program director. Field supervisors and faculty members need support and opportunities to expand their roles as much as students do. As the range and variety of infant/family practice expands, "multilevel" supervisory and mentorship models increase as well. For example, a state-level training and technical assistance agency may match mentors and protegees from different service programs, or leaders of a multi-site research and demonstration project may use their periodic site visits to help project staff at various levels reflect on their work.

The kind of communication that occurs within a collaborative supervisory or mentoring relationship in the field of infant/family practice may be the element that contributes most often to "occasional bliss." Such communication flows freely in both directions. It is open between participants, yet protected from outsiders. This kind of communication is highly suited to its specific task of examining professional work with infants, toddlers and their families. For such work is itself designed to foster communication, establish trust on a bedrock of confidentiality, and strengthen human relationships. One may use the term "parallel process" or speak of "doing unto others as you would have them do unto others," but the meaning remains the same. Open communication between supervisor and supervisee can be seen as a model for communication between professionals and parents, and between parents and children.

Regularity

Time is a scarce resource in programs that serve infants, toddlers, and their families. Daily demands are immediate and unrelenting, with little if any "down" time for staff. Funding patterns create pressure to spend as much time as possible in direct service; at the same time, reporting requirements consume hours of effort. The rapid pace of development during the first three years adds an extra sense of urgency to infant/family work: timing is critical, and missed opportunities for preventive intervention can be costly to child and family. Finally, the awareness of unmet need haunts every thoughtful practitioner in the field.

There is no getting around it, however. To be worthy of the name, supervision or mentorship must occur regularly. Time must be allocated for these relationships, and this time must be protected. It takes time to reflect, time to collaborate, and above all time to establish trust in the reliable nature of the relationship itself. The parallels with parent/infant and parent/professional relationships are clear.

Although they may argue eloquently for the importance of investing in very young children and their families, practitioners and administrators who work with this population are often reluctant to invest in the professional development of their staff members or themselves. Administrators may resist allocating time and staff for regular supervision or mentorship on the grounds that staff should "already know" how to do their jobs; or because basic services to as many children as possible must take precedence over improving, or even maintaining, the quality of planning or performance.

Infant/family training and service programs vary enormously in the amount of time they allocate to supervision or mentorship, but the importance of regularity is universally emphasized. If scheduling regular supervision by the calendar seems extraordinary difficult, it may nevertheless be possible to build collaborative reflection into an already regularly occurring process. The beginning of a program year, or the entrance of a new child or family into an ongoing service program, could be used as occasions for staff reflection,as an integral part of assessment and planning.

In sum...

While supervision and mentorship take many forms and build on many traditions in work with infants, toddlers, and their families, reflection, collaboration, and regularity seem to characterize virtually all effective supervisory and mentorship relationships in this diverse field. Resources are more likely to be scarce than abundant in any setting that serves very young children, but trainers and administrators who are convinced of the value of supervision or mentorship find endlessly creative ways to offer these experiences to their students and staff.

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