Continuing Education: Decentering Power in Clinical Supervision

Completion of this class will result in the receipt of two (2) continuing education hours.

Traditional supervision is rooted in oppressive practices that assume the superiority of one over the other. In addition, because mental health professionals are predominantly white, clinicians of color in community practice or in an internship are more likely to have white supervisors—adding societal-level power dynamics into the supervisory relationship. In this class, Norissa Williams, Ph.D., will discuss anti-oppressive supervision practices that address power dynamics. Rooted in an anti-blackness framework that considers the experiences of all BIPOC individuals, this discussion will explore restructuring hierarchies in supervisory practices, white supremacy culture and how it may manifest in supervision, internalized oppression and its manifestation in internalized superiority or internalized inferiority, and conclude with best practices for supervisors and supervisees in enacting their liberation.

About the Instructor
Norissa Williams holds a doctorate in psychology, a master’s in social work, and is the CEO of Liberation Research and Practice Institute (RPI). Liberation RPI partners with organizations to achieve the aims of liberation by developing their capacity to be anti-racist and anti-oppressive, and develop cultural competence. She accomplishes this through the provision of trainings, needs assessment, strategic action planning, program implementation, facilitation, and moderation. Williams has previously served as clinical faculty and program director of the master’s in counseling program at NYU. In addition, she has had other county-level leadership positions with the aim of helping organizations operate more equitably. Her scholarship relates to culturally embedded processes of coping socialization, cross-cultural differences in mental health help-seeking behaviors, critical consciousness development, decolonizing and liberating pedagogical and clinical practices, as well as anti-racist/anti-oppressive practices in organizational contexts.