Some functions of supervision
Supervision can serve a number of purposes. One area I tend to provide a lot of support is providing ongoing, external supervision to those who work for places such as non for profit, NSW Healthcare and NDIS organisations. Many find having external supervision, separate to the organisation they work provides some good space and separation.
Supervision also holds many other functions. We often need to be across policies and different aspects of legislation, such as child protection, how to handle release of information requests, subpoenas, and more. These situations are usually case by case and need to be looked at individually to assess the different factors and things that apply to the situation, or not.
Supervision also hold a crucial function in helping counsellors and social workers in maintaining their self-care. Increasingly, due to work place demands we are seeing more acute presentations and higher case loads. This can be difficult, or at times, impossible, to broach with an organisation, pending the culture and setup, as well as the client cases presenting (such as holding much risk and balancing this with duty of care). This is why having someone external supporting you to manage this and your self-care can be crucial.
At the same time, for those who are privately working it also supports the above functions, as well as practice building. This is learning how to use media, websites, going out and building connections with local GP’s are developed and honed. These contexts I often also find specific, as, for example, those working in regional areas can face additional challenges in how to set up and structure their practices.
Supervision also aims to enhance clinical practice at its core. This can be refining skills, discussing how we can do something differently or even recording aspects of client sessions for review. We aim to do this in a more reflective manner to help a supervisee come to their own ideas. Another aspect I often embed within my work is how to do the relational practice work in what we do
This means learning how to respond to clients in the moment, in a way that causes them to pause and reflect on the reason they do something (mentalizing) or attempting to understand why another might do this. This can be extremely useful for clients needing longer term approaches who may be less trusting of the systems we work in, or of therapists themselves.