Supervision

Wosket described supervision as

a formal arrangement whereby a practitioner discusses their work regularly with someone who is an experienced practitioner and supervisor. The task is to work together to ensure and develop the efficiency of the practitioner/client relationship.

The core functions of supervision are to provide a facilitative and affirmative professional relationship within which the welfare of the client is monitored, and the therapist is supported within their work and encouraged to develop.

The best way to ensure the safety of clients is to assist and nurture the supervisee through their work, to facilitate growth, confidence and autonomy through exploration, curiosity, challenge and frank dialogue.

At the core of supervision is still the relationship, in supervision, we encounter many relationships and to ensure we are of service to our supervisees an ability to be curious of and explore these remote relationships is critical. If these conditions are met in supervision, the benefit for the supervisee is that it

propels them to higher levels of professionalism” (Borders 1992) and can “enable the practitioner to identify more clearly their own individual style of working.

John Searson provides one-to-one supervision to qualified pre-accredited and accredited psychotherapists and counsellors in line with the guidelines and requirements for members of professional counselling and psychotherapy associations. In Supervision, we endeavour to provide a ‘basic affective relationship’ based on safety, equality and challenge with the supervisee.

 

The effective use of space largely depends on the supervisees willingness to make professional and personal disclosures. John works with a ‘cyclical model’ of supervision (Page and Wosket)