Policy Change Supervisor jobs in Virginia

At The Center for Connection, Healing and Change, we are proud of our systemic identity and services. We have curated a structured, intentional, and meaningful Systemic Residency/Supervision Program, striving to support our MSW supervisees to offer high-quality therapy services to our clients, develop a clear clinical identity, and prepare for the rigors of the field.

***Please note that applications will be only be considered where the application instructions have been followed.***

If you have been lucky enough to experience a supervision process that was willing to lean into BOTH your professional and personal growth, you know the profound impact this skill set, and relational investment, can have on someone starting out in the field.

Alongside systemic clinical supervision, focusing on evidence-based models of care that align with family systems, attachment, trauma-informed, and somatic psychotherapy, we also make space for the personal. Our program starts by acknowledging the humanity of choosing to become a therapist.

For many of us, we are initially drawn to the field wanting to help or be of service, not always fully understanding the role that our lived experience might have played in guiding us toward this occupation.

As we progress in our master’s program the process starts to shine a light on our vulnerabilities, strengths, wounds, survival strategies, protections, resources, limiting beliefs, resilience, relationship patterns, adaptions, stuck points, and resourcefulness.

We start to see that our career choice could include some effort on our part to organize, process, and come through the other side of our own human struggles.

As we start to work with clients, their humanity can bump up against ours. Where our clients present with ways of being that echo our own relationship experiences, particularly where these might not have given us what we needed, felt unsafe, or are not yet resolved, we might respond to clients from our own relational map and survival strategies.

Where our boundaries were not nurtured or respected, we might find that being clear, firm, and grounded with our clients is a challenge. Where we were not given permission or space to share our emotions, we might find we struggle to hold this same space for our clients. Where we had caregivers who were critical or unavailable, we may find ourselves triggered by these traits in the individuals, couples, and families we work alongside.

At The Center for Connection, Healing and Change, our supervision approach is underpinned by the models we practice. We live out with each other what we are asking of our clients. We normalize the personal growth journey of our residents. We know that many of us are coming into the field with a very human desire to connect, heal and change, and that part of being a therapist is learning to mitigate the impact our own journey of personal growth might have on the client or the client’s own therapeutic process.

We utilize the science of attachment as an organizing principle for our practice culture, particularly in our Systemic Residency/Supervision Program. Careful not to become their therapist, play out our own family of origin dynamics, or take responsibility for the growth or healing journey of our residents, we are willing to lean into relational process and trust that our interactions will serve as a mirror for earlier experiences, patterns, and wounds that could play out in clinical work.

Our dual focus on professional and personal growth has the primary goal of being of service to the client and their clinical experience.

Where a supervisor can notice and get curious about how they are experiencing the resident, both clinically and personally, space can be made for what is also playing out in the residents’ clinical interactions. From there, we can help them acknowledge the role that earlier wounds, patterns, and protections play in their clinical work and the impact this may have on the experience of the client. The goal is to make space for the humanity of the residents, not so they are perfect or free of struggle, but to normalize being in process. Just as we offer the same to clients, this serves as an experiential parallel process.

It is not the responsibility of the supervisor to make everything safe for the resident, to meet unmet relational needs, or serve as a healing container, but rather to be a place to normalize and acknowledge humanity, mitigate the impact it has on the client, and provide the resident with some accountability for their personal development.

Just as the supervisee has their person of the therapist work to do, so do we as the supervisor. Taking the risk to share your experience of a supervisee can feel risky, challenging, and vulnerable. Responding to transference can be challenging. Being an open emotional system to supervisees on a predictable basis can be demanding and require ongoing resourcing. Being a supervisor can shine a light on our wounds and patterns and where we may also struggle to be authentic, boundaried, or regulated in our connections. As supervisors, we are no less vulnerable to our attachment maps actively playing out in our clinical or supervisory relationships and so we also make space for your humanity, growth, healing, and interpersonal processes.

Experience and training in the models we align with is a cornerstone of our residency program. We can provide training in any models you are not currently familiar with but prefer that you are already grounded in systemic clinical practice. We also require applicants who practice relationally and see couples/and or families in their clinical work.

We offer full training, consultation, mentorship, and community in the art of being a systemic supervisor. We lean into the Person of the Therapist Model (Dr. Harry Aponte, LMFT) and Internap Family Systems as the blueprints for understanding the gift our humanity can offer to the therapeutic process, as well as the pitfalls and limitations this can hold for our clients.

We also utilize our clinical grounding in systemic, attachment-based, and trauma-informed models as a way of organizing the supervision process. We provide ongoing support and training in nurturing your own clinical identity within these models in service of your role as supervisor.

We are warmly inviting applications from both new and experienced supervisors. If you are an experienced supervisor, we look forward to capitalizing on your skills, deepening your practice, and offering a community of other skilled supervisors who are invested in supporting supervisees to reach their potential. If you are new to supervision, we look forward to sharing our wisdom and mentorship and supporting you in bringing your existing skills, training, experience, and growth into this new realm of practice.

We require all supervisors to also be clinicians at our practice, and are flexible about what this looks like. This can be on a part- or full-time basis. Please see our recruitment pages for licensed clinicians to learn more about how we nurture our therapists. You are also welcome to explore our resident/supervisee recruitment page to learn more about how we attract our supervisees.

Licensed Therapist recruitment pages:

https://www.thecenterforconnection.com/join-us/licensed-therapists/

https://www.indeed.com/job/licensed-therapist-unique-culturebenefitsinvestment-growth-442e6ec890ac51bf

Resident recruitment pages:

https://www.thecenterforconnection.com/join-us/residency-program/

https://www.indeed.com/job/systemic-residency-program-marriage-family-therapists-prof-counselors-a68f992993f03299

Supervisors will have up to four residents in a cohort, with a maximum of two cohorts at any given time. Clinical supervisors provide individual supervision weekly and group supervision with each cohort every other week.

We offer bi-weekly individual consultation, monthly group consultations with other clinical supervisors, and monthly leadership team meetings. We offer ongoing training in the art of human first, attachment-based, systemic, Person of The Therapist supervision, and supervision from an IFS perspective both in-house and externally, as well as all the benefits offered to licensed clinicians for your own clinical practice.

If you are interested in applying, please submit your resume and a cover letter to elaynesmith@ thecenterforconnection.com. We want to get a sense of who you are through your cover letter so please include a description of the treatment models you resonate with, your chosen areas of clinical focus, clinical supervision philosophy, areas of personal growth you are currently working on, and current employment needs.

We look forward to hearing from you.

Job Types: Full-time, Part-time

Benefits:

• Flexible schedule
• Health insurance
• Health savings account
• Professional development assistance

Schedule:

• Choose your own hours

Work Location: Hybrid remote in Sterling, VA 20166