Supervision matters

Counselling supervision matters.

It’s mandatory, for a start off. Many professional membership bodies view supervision as essential for every practising therapist, including BACP, UKCP, NCP, COSRT.

The Grove thinks so too. But what makes good supervision?

Supervision matters because it provides a much-needed reflective space away from the demands of delivering therapy. It can be a support and container for the therapist.

Importantly, supervision promotes the best interests of the client, where the counsellor is held accountable by their supervisor on behalf of the wider profession and the public.

We believe that there’s a role for educating and developing the supervisee in their psychotherapeutic work. Every practising mental health professional can benefit from better skills and knowledge. Supervision provides a space to explore this, which might include a discussion of CPD planning.

Supervision is a relationship, albeit a professional one. So good relational skills are essential for the supervisor.

Our supervision course was written based on our belief about the essence of training excellent supervisors. Our view is that being a good therapist it’s not all it takes to become a good supervisor. We say that there are additional skills involved in being a supervisor, such as the ability to see over thorny topics like ethics and anti-discriminatory practice.

Supervisees seek guidance from their supervisor about handling contracting and boundaries, about how to form effective therapeutic alliances with their clients and, about the law relating to records and client data.

We believe that a higher level of responsibility within the hierarchy for a supervisor means a higher level of training is required. Particularly when strong forces like projection, transference and group dynamics can be at play.

That’s why our Diploma-level counselling supervision training operates with a syllabus which covers all these important aspects.

Most mental health professionals can tell horror stories about supervision that was damaging, discriminatory, or unhelpful to say the least. A solid clinical supervision training helps to avoid these disturbing experiences, towards building a more skilled set of supervisors as well as supervisees who can get the best out of the supervision experience.

The Grove has a strong reputation for running high-quality CPD Supervision courses, many of which are externally accredited. Our CPD programme is expanding in 2022 with more courses and more intakes, giving more choice and opportunity to learn from the experts from our centre of excellence.