Liberation-focused Community Outreach: A Qualitative Exploration of Peer Group Supervision during Disaster Response

While it is clear that community outreach and disaster response must include cultural and social justice competence, there is a dearth of knowledge regarding the process by which this can occur. Guided by liberation psychology, this qualitative study examined the peer group supervision process of psychologists and counselors providing outreach to Haitian communities in Florida after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The findings suggest that peer supervision generated a cyclical process in which the practitioners focused on both content and process themes that were salient to the community outreach. During supervision, practitioners used content information on the community\u27s culture, strengths, and sociopolitical issues to conceptualize the community\u27s experiences and needs. This content informed the outreach process, including the practitioners’ roles and the ways in which they connected and developed respectful relationships with the community. Ongoing peer supervision appeared to facilitate a liberation-focused community outreach and increase consciousness among the practitioners