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The Practice of Supervision |
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Suzanne Moore, Ph.D., LPC Supervisor |
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Good clinical supervision is an essential element for training licensed counselors. Current legal requirements are for 3,000 hours of post-degree supervised experience for anyone holding a temporary license. The 3,000 hour rule went into effect September 1, 1997 in Texas. The post-degree internship provides the opportunity for supervisees to acquire hands-on experience that facilitates the integration and application of graduate school knowledge. The intent of the law is to provide safety for temporary licensees as well as for clients, providing guidance and consultation on a regular planned basis, as well as in emergencies. Clients are ensured protection with clinical insight from two counselors, the novice and the experienced. |
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Selecting a Supervisor |
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Clinical supervision, like counseling, is a consumer-driven commodity. In identifying a potential clinical supervisor, temporary licensees should make the effort to interview potential supervisors. But how will temporary licensees know who would make a good supervisor? |
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In addition to providing the wisdom and insight of an experienced counselor, clinical supervisors must be willing to serve as role model, teacher, mentor, and resource person. They must be willing to provide connections to further training for temporary licensees as well as act as a referral source for area mental health services for the supervisee's clients. Clinical supervisors must be willing to act in the best interests of the clinical development of the temporary licensee, an ingredient that may be missing when the on-the-job administrative supervisor accepts the dual role of clinical supervisor. In this case, the temporary licensee must be forthright about training needs and the appropriateness of job assignments. |
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Kaiser (1992) suggested that the success of a clinical supervision experience is dependent upon relationships established between supervisors and supervisees. Four elements of good clinical supervision in many ways mirror those for a successful counselor-client relationship: Accountability, Personal Awareness, Trust, and Power Authority. |
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Ethical practice requires that supervisors and supervisees be accountable. First, supervisees must assess whether a potential supervisor is willing to be accountable in conducting clinical supervision. Have they received training in clinical supervision and what is their model? Are they approved by the LPC Board? Will they hold regularly scheduled appointments or must you track them down each week to get time with them? This problem is more evident with on-the-job administrative supervisors than when one hires an individual clinical supervisor. Will this supervisor encourage you to confront weak areas or avoid them? Will training with this supervisor give you your "money's worth" or serve only to meet minimum requirements? Equally important is accountability to the client, which revolves around the quality of supervision. Will you be "in training," or are you expected to learn on your own with minimal support?
If you receive clinical supervision as an agency benefit, speak with interns to determine whether the agency is understaffed. Some well-intentioned agencies provide desperately needed client services to under served populations at nominal or no charge and rely heavily on volunteers, practicum students, and post-graduate interns to accomplish it. They willingly hire novices but many times expect self-starters to "sink or swim." Research the job site to determine whether your background has prepared you for functioning in that setting. Some temporary licensees can contend with such stressors because they are experienced counselors seeking the LPC in Texas for the first time--perhaps from out-of-state, LCDC, pastoral or school counselors. If you don't fit this description, look elsewhere. For your protection, Board Rules allow only eight temporary licensees per clinical supervisor. |
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Next, what is the supervisor's attitude about paper work? Is the supervisor willing to document each session with you or are you expected to do that and they sign off on it? A supervisor must log individual and group sessions and be accountable for the number and content of sessions. Supervisees may not obtain more than 50 percent of clinical supervision hours through group supervision. Are sessions provided at the ratio of one hour per week of experience? Generally, supervision must be held at regular weekly intervals, give or take a few days. How are holidays and vacation periods handled? |
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Examine a Clinical Supervision Agreement form. What is the term of the agreement? Have supervision agreements been accepted by the Board for previous supervisees? Have previous supervisees had documentation rejected by the LPC Board? Does the supervisor provide forms for you to use to log client contact hours planned, and client contact and administrative hours accumulated? Are you expected to keep your own? |
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At a minimum, clinical supervisors must keep an hourly log of supervision sessions noting session time, date, and topics covered. How will the supervisor provide ethics training? Will you attend ethics seminars or will ethics be covered routinely as a part of weekly contact? |
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At a minimum, the supervisee must show evidence of planning, and keep records of actual client contact and administrative hours. To keep the supervisor apprised of intended work with identified clients for the week, I suggest that supervisees submit an agenda showing clients to be seen by hour, day, and date. The second form that a supervisee must keep is (a) a record of actual client contact hours, by categories of individual, group, and family/couple; and (b) a record of administrative hours accrued for case preparation and supervision.
Record keeping must be contemporaneous, so submit documentation to your supervisor weekly for their signature and keep a copy for yourself. Tallying 3,000 hours is no picnic on scraps of papers without signatures; If your supervisor were suddenly incapacitated, at least you would have viable documents and would not lose credit for that experience because it went undocumented. Does the supervisor keep a file on each supervisee for clinical supervision separate from on-the-job administrative files? |
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Is there a written policy for interns that explains grievance procedures and rights as a supervisee? Does agency policy clarify the priorities of clinical supervisors regarding (a) administrative duties and priorities, (b) training duties and priorities, and (c) provision of client services? At the end of the supervised experience period, one final document must be completed by both supervisor and supervisee and notarized. This form asks the supervisor whether they believe the temporary licensee should be granted a full license to work unsupervised. In terms of accountability, this is perhaps the most important step in supervision: An honest appraisal of the capabilities of the supervisee.
If the supervisee has been accountable, has self awareness, and otherwise has demonstrated that he or she is worthy of the public's trust, this form is the place to say it. If, in the considered opinion of the supervisor, the temporary licensee is not ready for independent practice, the supervisor must state the reasons why the supervisee is not ready. Supervisors must also submit a plan for remediation, which could include additional supervised experience, additional course work, personal therapy, assessment and evaluations. Although often a difficult task, the Board's experience has been that supervisors are willing to be accountable by providing honest assessments and, when necessary, by reporting supervisees who are not ready for independent practice. These have been some accountability aspects to consider when engaging in clinical supervision. The next article examines personal awareness in supervision. |
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REFERENCE: Kaiser, T.L. (1992). The supervisory relationship: An identification of the primary elements in the relationship and an application of two theories of ethical relationships. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 18, 2 |
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An earlier version of this article was originally published in The Examiner by the Texas State Board of Examiners of Professional Counselors, in 1998. |
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