Features sometimes have expectations of clinical supervision that go beyond what is appropriate. Some counsellors expect their supervisors to perform extra-supervisory roles, such as providing therapy, being a trainer, or functioning as an advocate. There are some limitations on what you can reasonably expect your clinical supervisor to do for you. While you expect your clinical supervisor to be an accomplished therapist, that is not the role you should expect her/him to fill for you in giving you supervision. In a supervision session, your work with clients is always the central issue. Munson (2002) insists on an absolute dichotomy saying; “Supervision is supervision and therapy is therapy. There is limited value to a practitioner’s learning to do treatment from being in therapy.” An analyst would, of course, disagree with Munson on the second point, and many counsellors would point out that, despite what Munson says, supervision does have a restorative function. Sometimes the boundaries between supervision and therapy can become a little fuzzy. For one thing, your supervisor should be alert to identifying signs of burnout in you. Where this is in evidence, he/she should allow you to debrief and permit some therapeutic offloading. However, if the venting of emotional issues is leading to you becoming self-preoccupied rather than thinking about the client, your supervisor should find ways for both of you to step outside that process, review what is happening and make a transition from venting to talking about the client. If you have some personal difficulties that are in need of therapeutic attention but not directly related to your counselling work, you might disclose these to your supervisor and expect that you would be given an appropriate referral. Can your supervisor also be your trainer? You can expect to learn much from a person who is more experienced in your field of work than you are, but to what extent can you expect to be trained by that person? There are some boundaries, admittedly somewhat blurred, between formal training and the educational dimensions of clinical supervision. A supervisor may at times coach you in developing professional skills and knowledge. This may involve demonstration, practical exercises, and provision of resource materials, but it should not extend into providing you with a structured training program. If this is what you need, the supervisor can point you in the right direction to access a range of choices. Nor should the supervisor be an advocate on your behalf. Some years ago a skilled therapist was contracted by an agency to provide group supervision to its team of counsellors. The therapist, inexperienced as a supervisor, allowed the sessions to develop into forums for complaints about the agency’s procedures and the conduct of its management. With the agreement and encouragement of the team, the supervisor regularly took these issues to the agency’s operations manager. This line of action proved to be counter-productive. After around eighteen months, the agency terminated the supervision contract, and the provision of group supervision was discontinued. In grievances concerning an employer or your work environment, it isn’t appropriate for your supervisor to take up an advocacy role. However, if employer/workplace grievances are impacting on your work with clients, they can and should be aired in supervision. The supervisor should then refer you to suitable grievance procedures for further action. 24
The Session Agenda Who should set the supervision session agenda? The supervisee has the responsibility of choosing the subject matter for clinical supervision. Your supervisor should, of course, be alert for issues in your practice that need attention and will bring these up for discussion. Overall, though, she/he does not decide what the agenda of a supervision session should be. You, therefore, need to form clear objectives in your mind for each session. You should prepare the full agenda each time to suit your special requirements, allowing flexibility for your supervisor to suggest appropriate modifications if needed. In a group setting, group members should collaborate with each other and with the supervisor in setting the agenda. Confidentiality What degree of confidentiality can be expected in the supervisorsupervisee relationship? You can expect all clinical supervisors to exercise the same level of confidentiality with you as you do with a client. This means that in supervision you can express yourself freely, without fear that what you say will be disclosed to others. There are, though, certain limitations. Just as a counsellor is legally obliged to notify an appropriate authority if a client speaks of having committed an indictable offence or reveals an intention to harm self or others, a clinical supervisor is also constrained by safety issues and legal considerations. On the one hand there is a need to ensure the confidentiality of individual sessions in order to provide a safe and constructive learning environment. On the other, given the role of clinical supervision as a mechanism for clinical quality and safety, there is a need to ensure that any sufficiently serious issues related to clinical practice are dealt with appropriately and transparently. ~NSW Drug and Alcohol Clinical Supervision Guidelines (2006) Confidentiality conditions should be clearly set out in the contract you have with your supervisor. If the contract is made between the two of you and no one else, it will have conditions such as are described above, but there are exceptions with some contractual situations. If, for example, the contract is a threeway agreement between you, the supervisor and your employer, it may permit your employer to be privy to details of what ensues in clinical supervision. This arrangement might impact substantially on how you would choose to present in supervision. Supervision Alternatives What alternative formats exist for supervision? Suppose you have found your heaven-sent supervisor: What format would you like for your supervision experience? A private face-to-face interaction between you and the supervisor is the most common and generally the most preferred. Some circumstances, though, may make this choice impracticable, and there are other options. Group supervision, video conferencing, or telephone supervision are available from some supervisors and, while each of these alternative forms has certain limitations, there are also some advantages. Whether group supervision is helpful or not depends a great deal on the size and composition of the group and whether the supervisor has been adequately trained in group dynamics. The participants need to have equal status, and a group consisting of two counsellors and a person from line-management will be likely to develop difficulties. There has to be a way of ensuring that every participant has a fair share of attention. Dominant personalities must be skillfully managed. A high level of mutual respect and empathy among the participants must be maintained. If these CQ: The Capa Quarterly