Gillian O'brien’s scientific contributions

Heron’s six category intervention framework, delineating key intervention styles within helping relationships, was developed to guide therapeutic work but has also been applied to supervisory work. Some previous research has investigated this framework’s relevance for practice but there has been no previous research analyzing its application to supervision. Following a longitudinal, naturalistic, observational case study design, this study aimed to analyze and illustrate the usefulness of the six category intervention framework as a guide for supervisory practice. Individual meetings of five supervisory dyads in an Irish transdisciplinary, brief-intervention, public youth mental health service were recorded for 6 months. A codebook applying Heron’s intervention framework to supervision was developed inductively and deductively, good interrater reliability was established, and transcripts of 20 of the dyads’ supervision meetings were coded and analyzed. Informative interventions were found to be most dominant, followed by supportive and prescriptive interventions. Catalytic interventions were seldom used, and confronting and cathartic interventions were rare. It is concluded that the high use of informative interventions fitted the needs of early-career supervisees and the high pace of a brief-intervention service. However, a greater balance of interventions is recommended in supervisory practice, particularly more catalytic, cathartic, and confronting interventions, in order to foster supervisee autonomy and capability. Detailed illustrations of seldom-used interventions are presented and analyzed, and opportunities for their greater use are considered. It is concluded that the six category intervention framework offers a useful guide for supervisor training and ongoing development of supervisory practice in workplace settings.

In this observational study, recordings of 40 individual supervision meetings over six months for five supervisory dyads in an Irish, transdisciplinary youth mental health service were analyzed and illustrated according to the Seven-Eyed model of supervision. Results offer empirical support regarding the model’s relevance for supervision practice, provide practice-based evidence to elaborate aspects of the model, and show the model’s value in identifying areas of practice that may benefit from development. Illustrations of some supervision exchanges are shared which contribute to our understanding of the complexity of working at the personal-professional boundary, particularly in workplace, transdisciplinary supervision involving dual roles.

A naturalistic, observational, longitudinal, systematic case study of supervisory practice using the SAGE protocol (Supervision Adherence and Guidance Evaluation, Milne et al., 2011)