Caila, a Black cisgender female full-time counselor education doctoral student, is providing supervision to master’s internship students. Additionally, she is scheduled to take her general exams at the end of the semester. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the university is offering a majority of classes either in online or hybrid formats and has left that decision to the faculty. The program’s faculty has agreed that supervision can be done remotely and has secured appropriate ways to communicate and share recordings. Caila has provided all of her supervision to Kyle, a Caucasian cisgender male, and her other two supervisees, via technology due to the fact that she is a higher at-risk individual.
Around the time of midterms Caila receives notice that she has been exposed to someone who has tested positive for COVID-19; therefore, she is required to quarantine for 2 weeks. Caila lives alone and is several hours away from any of her family members. She is struggling to find support from people who can bring her groceries and needed supplies. She is feeling isolated and is having trouble concentrating due to the stress of quarantine and fears that she will develop the virus. She feels helpless in keeping up with requirements for her doctoral program since she cannot leave her home and has to conduct all of her courses, supervision, and meetings remotely. She has informed her faculty supervisor, Dr. Charles Smith, about her quarantine, but not her fears and difficulty in focusing.
During quarantine, Caila receives a text from one of her friends, another doctoral student in the program. Her friend heard from one of her supervisees that Kyle recently met with Dr. Smith. Kyle supposedly told Dr. Smith that he is struggling with Caila as his clinical supervisor. His complaints is that he has never met Caila in person and that her feedback is aggressive and too critical without any direction, but does not provide any specific examples. Dr. Smith offers to help Kyle with some of his cases and Kyle allows him access to his recordings. Neither Dr. Smith nor Kyle report this meeting to Caila. However, due to her own access to Kyle’s recordings, Caila is able to see who else has access to the recordings.
At their next Zoom supervision session, Caila does her normal check in regarding whether Kyle has anything specific he would like to address. Kyle reports he is seeing 6 clients, but Caila only has two clients’ recordings. Kyle states the other four have not agreed to be recorded. Additionally, Kyle, as he usually does, reports that he has no concerns about clients, but rather the site itself. The site is not following city mandated COVID-19 protocols. Staff are not regularly wearing masks, and he worries about his safety and the safety of the clients at the facility. He has not brought this up with his site supervisor because he does not want to get a negative evaluation. Kyle does not mention that he met with Dr. Smith and Caila does not bring it up during the session. When Caila later tries to contact Kyle’s site supervisor about his safety concerns and his progress with other clients, she receives no response to her multiple calls and e-mails, and due to quarantine, she cannot do a site visit to see what is actually happening at the site and with Kyle.