To date, there is only a limited amount of literature and published workforce resources that explicitly focus on culture, diversity, and/or racial equity in the context of IECMH Reflective Supervision. Nevertheless, there is also an increasing sense of urgency to acknowledge race, power, and equity in reflective practice and to increase the capacity of those who provide reflective supervision (and reflective supervision/consultation) to integrate more of a racial equity lens into their day-to-day work.

Indigo Cultural Center and the Alliance for the Advancement of Infant Mental Health have come together to co-create a critical and community-forward approach in shaping the field of reflective supervision (RS) in infant and early childhood mental health (IECMH) and advance a new RS paradigm and framework for the Alliance that is influenced by expansive antiracist, Indigenous, and liberatory frameworks.

Developed with support from the Perigee Fund, this report was informed by national focus groups and surveys of more than 150 individuals, including Reflective Supervision & IECMHC community members, leaders, practitioners, providers, trainers, and organizations. The resulting report, Digging Deeper: Decolonizing Our Understanding and Practices of Reflective Supervision through a Racial Equity Lens  highlights and centers the voices, experiences, and feedback from members of our IECMH workforce who identify as Black, Indigenous or as persons of color (BIPOC). As a result, the findings we present in this report highlight focus group themes elucidated by our BIPOC participants. 

In addition to analyses of existing data and a review of the latest research, this report also includes concrete recommendations for IECMHC supervisors, systems leaders, researchers, evaluators, policymakers at the federal, state and local levels so that they can take immediate, meaningful steps towards the transformation our infrastructure related to the practice and provision of RS.