Helping the Helpers: Supporting Our Staff

There is a phrase that I often use when talking with my staff, particularly those working around behavioral intervention. It goes something like this: “If I am going to be all in about us supporting students, I need to be all in as it relates to supporting our staff.” This has come from my own reflections and experiences, in which I have often been taken aback by what seemed like two very different approaches to supporting the two audiences.

Some time ago, a case manager I oversee was working on a particularly challenging case. They had been working with a student off and on for a few months, but they had recently returned to our caseload when they disclosed being in an abusive relationship. Using the phrase ‘return to our caseload’ likely does the scenario a disservice, as it returned with a particularly challenging report of violence and concern for the student in the moment and long term. Once we were able to confirm that the student was safe and that appropriate referrals and reports had been made, we turned to planning the next steps for support.

One of the things that makes this case manager excellent is their incredible ability to navigate systems and resources. This knowledge often greatly supports their work with many of our students, but I could tell almost immediately that something felt different in this case. Every step in supporting the student came with hurdles or obstacles that we had managed to avoid in past cases. Some of these came directly from the student, who began to go MIA in their communication, as well as from faltering social service options. As the case progressed, I noticed the case manager began to fixate, become dissatisfied with systems that kept hitting dead ends, and generally left no stone unturned. And while my case manager regularly goes above and beyond, this just felt different. Thankfully, we were eventually able to re-establish communication with the student to partner with and support them.

However, I could not shake my own perception that something had been different for the case manager. In our next supervision meeting, I made a point of checking in and directly mentioning that I felt a difference in how they showed up in the case and in how they reacted. To their credit, this case manager is very reflective and emotionally aware, and quickly acknowledged having noticed the same phenomenon.  We spent some time discussing why that could have been, naming the uncertainty about safety and other personal connections to emotional and relationship abuse, as well as the challenging geopolitical landscape that was also regularly on their mind. That said, I am not sure we ever reached a clear explanation of the underlying cause, but what was most important was that the line of communication had been opened.

During the discussion, we both acknowledged the challenges of this work, the realities of burnout, and the need to manage personal boundaries. They shared that they were continuing to reflect on it. And we both committed to naming instances like this in the future, so we can ensure we continue to name when we need to step back or discuss aspects of a case that may manifest in unique or personal ways. It may not have been a solution or even an explanation, but it opened a space. And helped emphasize the values we both wished to operate on.

I share this not because I intend to present myself as a great boss. But instead, to acknowledge it is so easy to lose ourselves in this work. The reality is that there are so many that we support, and another crisis almost always comes. However, as supervisors working with those on the front lines of creating a culture of care, we acknowledge that it must also extend care to those who enact that culture.

Pavan Purswani

Interim Assistant Dean of Students & Title IX Coordinator, University of Baltimore