Consulting
Clinical Consultation
Clinical consultation is a process where individuals who are delivering client direct clinical services and/or psychotherapy meet with a consultant to talk about their work experiences. According to the Ontario Association of Social Workers, clinical consultation helps social worker’s develop professional judgement, clinical knowledge and skills, and deeper self-reflection. Research further provides evidence that supportive professional relationships, such as clinical consultation, helps reduce the risk of compassion fatigue, burnout and vicarious trauma.
Clinical consultation with Amanda Rocheleau, MSW, RSW may involve exploring client cases, difficult work situations or ethical dilemmas together so that you don't have to navigate these situations alone. These sessions also are opportunities to receive support, education, and guidance in your overall professional practice. Amanda's process is collaborative and focuses on four main areas of practice - direct practice, psychological health, continued learning and job management.
Amanda offers various forms of clinical consultation for individuals, small groups and agencies - currently all virtually.
~ Q & A ~
What's the difference between supervision and consultation?
The words consultation and supervision are often used interchangeably, however, there are significant and notable distinctions. Firstly, supervision is mainly a consistent and ongoing relationship where the supervisor's role is to provide ongoing evaluations and feedback about the supervisee's performance. The supervisor has more experience and oversees the supervisee's work. The supervisor is also legally responsible (liable) for the actions of their supervisees and must be informed of the details of the supervisee’s client cases and interventions used.
Whereas consultation is an interactive process that often takes place between peers or professionals with particular types of training or experience in order to support a practitioner's clinical work. Consultation meetings can be sporadic and scheduled on an “as needed” basis and identifying information about clients is not revealed. Consultants are not liable or responsible for overseeing the work of other professionals.
The Ontario College of Social Workers and Social Services Workers (OCSWSSW) allows for various options for practice guidance including consultation, supervision and peer consultation. Reviewing the Professional Practice guidelines with OCSWSSW will help you determine if your level of experience, skills and client work are within your scope of practice and therefore consultation is satisfactory.
Can Amanda supervise Registered Psychotherapists Qualifying (RPQ)?
No, Amanda does not provide supervision that counts towards the required supervision hours for Qualifying RPs under the College of Registered Psychotherapists of Ontario (CRPO), however, she is available for clinical consultation as needed to support you in your work with clients.
Group Debriefing
Critical Incident Group Debriefing
Critical incidents are situations that occur outside of our normal frame of reference and challenge us to understand and cope with what has happened. Critical incidents may be any type of distressing situation or event that profoundly changes or disrupts a group's functioning.
Critical Incident Group Debriefing (CIGD) is a short-term group intervention process that focuses on this shared experience between the group participants and provides a place for them to talk about the impact the incident, process the stress it has caused and explore ways the group can heal. CIGD is one of several methods that may be utilized to lessen the likelihood of people experiencing symptoms of trauma and stress after a critical incident.
Amanda Rocheleau, MSW, RSW is a trained Traumatic Incident Reduction Practitioner and Critical Incident Group Debriefing Facilitator and has facilitated many CIGD sessions for groups who have experienced a wide range of distressing events. She uses a semi-structured approach that gently guides the conversation and help maintain a safe sharing space while offering some insights and reflective questions.
If your team has recently gone through a critical incident, reach out to schedule a group debriefing session.
Wellness Check-in and Debrief Group
These groups are regularly scheduled meetings for teams/agencies where staff come together to talk about the relationship between their work and personal wellness. This supportive group is a unique opportunity to process experiences related to their helper roles while they assess, monitor and make commitments to their wellness practices. Debriefing with peers helps mitigate the stress impact from our jobs and has proven to be one of the most beneficial methods of preventing psychological injuries and secondary traumatic stress. In these scheduled meetings, we take the time to discuss the challenges that come with frontline work and together we can normalize and validate our experiences related to empathy-based stress. Collectively we can provide time for self-reflection, provide support to one another and inform ourselves about psychological well-being.
Meetings can be scheduled bi-weekly, monthly or quarterly.
Private Practice Consulting
Having a private practice may mean you are a solo-practitioner but it doesn't have to mean actually being solo!
If you are looking for support in building, launching or maintaining your private practice you can get the support you are looking for from the Sustainable Practice Program, a group coaching program that is designed to help you develop a personalized plan to build your private practice.