Supervision for Therapists
Supervision: an introduction
Supervision is an essential way to support your professional career as a counsellor. Receiving guidance and learning from a highly experienced therapist outside of your own practice will not only introduce you to new ways of working and inspire you to explore and expand, but it will also strengthen your interpersonal skills, giving you a greater depth of knowledge and understanding of the people you work with.
Counselling is not an easy job. You will work with people’s trauma, darkest thoughts, and heaviest burdens. It can take a long time to untangle the difficulties in a clients life, and how this entangles with yours. Professional and personal. Being equipped with the best and most extensive range of tools you will stand you in very good stead.
Seeking support and additional learning from someone in the same field can be extremely beneficial to your practice, and by reviewing and being able to reason and justify your approach to counselling and coaching, you keep providing good practice to your clients.
Governing bodies such as the BACP state that counsellors must attend regular supervision to work ethically.
How does supervision help your practice?
Breaking supervision into three main arenas helps us understand what professional guidance as therapist we need :
Administrative supervision – Administration, ethical, and legal support is a vital cog in the therapeutic wheel. Without it, there can be a significant lapse in work upkeep and accountability, resulting in a practice that perhaps doesn’t run as efficiently or ethically in the way it should. Seeking administrative support will assist you in keeping the practical elements of your practice in check, such as client appointments, meetings, finances and invoicing, general administrative procedures and processing, client record retention and record keeping. Administration issues are usually amongst the first to crop up when business becomes busy, a lack of time and organisation leading to impacted efficiency, and falling fowl to governing bodies.
Clinical Supervision (Educational Supervision) – At the heart of bettering your counselling practice. Clinical – also known as Educational – Supervision is the sharing of skills and knowledge to enhance your work and support you in best helping your clients. Conversations you may have whilst receiving clinical supervision include; diagnosis/assessments for various disorders, options for treatment, medication, care barriers and so on. Engaging in this avenue of supervision will also call on you to look at your relationship with your clients, what your role is in their treatment, as well as your goals and challenges when working with clients. Clinical Supervision gets to the heart of your work and how you want to go about expanding your approach.
Supportive Supervision – Supervision also helps you to cope. It’s not easy counselling and coaching people, and as humans we are all triggered by things that come up in sessions. If this happens, The Therapy Room may suggest you access your own therapy too.
Often ethical dilemmas come up. Being able to assess your approach and view of the situation comes from a third party, someone external to the situation. We highly recommend supervision to make the most of your communication and engagement as a therapist, counsellor or coach.
Supervision at The Therapy Room
At The Therapy Room we can help encourage the natural skills you possess, and work with the challenges you face. Our aim is to facilitate personal performance and making sure your work life is sustainable to avoid professional and emotional burnout.
Recent times have seen the rise of online meetings, and while this allows for flexibility and we are happy to commit to sessions online, we also recommend that undertaking supervision in person. Face to face human connection can make all the difference to a client, and so building in-person skills and presence is one of the main ways in which to better your practice.
At The Therapy Room in Northampton, you can access confidential, experienced supervision to guide your counselling career, and find personal support and challenge to strengthen the services you provide.
We believe that learning is a continuous process that can always be expanded. The world is rapidly changing, the issues faced by each generation becoming more complex. New discoveries are being made each day about us as humans, how we operate, how we store sensory stimulation, events, and how our intricate minds are affected by things that happen around us.
There is still much more to be uncovered, and so it stands to reason that those seeking help should have access to mental health support which has moved with the times to best suit the needs of a modern society. This dedication to skill improvement and flexibility in working will help to ensure that your clients receive the best care possible, creating greater rapport and trust between therapist and client.
Working closely with supervisor Jay Pink, you will have the chance to expand your practice, not only being introduced to new ways of working and thinking when assisting clients, but also a focused advancement of personal understanding and skills. Jay’s supervisory approach is personal, direct and challenging – designed to get the most out of you and your capability in any scenario.
We work to the strict ethics and regulations of the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) and the National Counselling Society (NCS). Jay is registered with both governing bodies and believes in ongoing training, academic learning and supervision for his own career and expertise. The Therapy Room’s modalities include CBT, TA, Gestalt, Psychodynamic and Existential.
At the Therapy Room we are able to support your practise in a way that suits your practice. Contact the Therapy Room today and book in for career enhancing Supervision.
