Supervision is a professional service, not a managerial role. Working under supervision means that a therapist uses the services of a qualified ‘counselling supervisor’ to review their work with clients on a regular basis. Supervision may include coaching and professional development. Here, the supervisor acts not as a ‘boss’ but is a consultant to the supervisee.

I offer a well furnished bespoke supervision service for counsellors, supervisors, psychotherapists, trainee therapists and other professionals who require individual or group supervision. I work with an open, Integrative Model of Supervision; incorporating a process of exploration and collaborative review.

My emphasis lies in exploring the experiences, feelings and thoughts that arise within the supervisee in relationship with their client; with a particular emphasis on the relational process. The process focuses on four tasks:

Normative (Quality control, ethics, standards and professional issues).
Formative (Developing skills, understanding and abilities).
Restorative (Attending to feelings).
Wider Perspective (Impact on therapy when working in a multi-disciplinary environment, e.g. GP practice, hospital, company, organisation).

Within the supervision relationship is support and a valuable opportunity to reflect on the work a supervisee undertakes with a client, the achievements and the blocks.

Supervision is an explorative or collaborative review with two people working openly together to explore, understand and appreciate the nature of the counselling relationship. I believe supervision is a requirement for providing a truly professional and ethical counselling service. Indeed, I believe it has something important to offer anyone working in a caring or helping profession.

Supervision exists for two reasons:

To protect clients, and
To improve the ability of counsellors to provide value to their clients.

Supervision protects clients by involving an impartial third party in the work of a counsellor and client, helping to reduce the risk of serious oversight and helping the counsellor concerned to reflect on their own feelings, thoughts, behaviour and general approach with the client.

These opportunities to reflect on how they relate to the client, as well as to gain insights from the perspective of another therapist, also help the counsellor to improve the value and quality of the service they provide.

The practice of supervision means that details provided by clients are shared with people other than the counsellor concerned. However, overall client confidentiality is still safeguarded because information shared in supervision is itself protected under a contract of confidentiality and normally may not be shared outside the supervision relationship.

A client may ask questions about their own counsellor’s supervision arrangements. A client has the right to ask how their counsellor is supervised, and any counsellor or psychotherapist should be able to provide details of their supervision arrangements, such as the nature of the supervision relationship and the number of hours spent in supervision as relative to the counsellor’s caseload.