Supervision Practice Scenario 5 - Fred

Fred is a Peer Specialist on the Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team, a multidisciplinary team that provides treatment to people in the community. The team consists of a psychiatrist, a nurse, Fred, and you (a therapist). You are also Fred’s immediate supervisor. Although the team has been working closely together for five years, Fred has been acting a bit strange lately. He refuses to pack medications and dispense them to people. He is asking people what they want rather than telling people what they need to do. He has been more hopeful with the people he supports and more distant from the members of the team.

In your last supervision session, you notice Fred’s progress notes focus on what’s right rather than what’s wrong with each person. You ask Fred what has changed, and he says, “I took a class in the values of peer support and person-centered principles and after reading the Code of Ethical Conduct I realized, for the first time, that the work I’ve been doing on the ACT team really isn’t peer support. I’m just trying to do peer support, which is, I thought, the work I was hired to do.”

As Fred’s supervisor, what would you do?

• Create a new post with your response to "As the supervisor, I would..." (taking into account what you learned from the course faculty)
  
• Review at least 3 postings from others in the class
  
• Respond to at least 1 posting from someone else in the class with additional thoughts about the posting.