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Supporting your supervisee
Supervisors can be crucial to a successful applicationfor accreditation and we often get asked how a supervisor can best work with a supervisee who is putting together an application for accreditation.
Although you may be accredited yourself, this may have been some time ago, or you may be accredited with another organisation.
In order to help you, we have put together some guidance which you may find useful in working with your supervisee whilst maintaining appropriate boundaries.
Role of the Supervisor
- To collaborate in a focussed review of your supervisee's practice to date
- To regard this as an opportunity for useful professional development as well as supporting the accreditation application
- to discuss with your supervisee their readiness to apply for accreditation in an open way
- To facilitate with your supervisee the process of reflection on and articulation of the rationale for their client work with reference to the theory/ theories that inform their practice-at the time of application, as mature practitioners and how their practice is consistent with the described way of working, demonstrated in the chosen case material
- To facilitate the articulation of ethical thinking inherent in the presented ‘evidence'; to help make explicit the ways in which your supervisee can demonstrate the capacity for independent, competent, ethical practice, in the presented evidence; to consider the overall consistency of the application, to ensure that all the elements fit together. This may entail stating the obvious, making explicit the way they work and why, for a supervisee who has been practising for some years.
What to do
- Agree to offer support to your supervisee through the process of putting together their application
- Familiarise yourself with the criteria, the application forms, the application process and relevant aspects of the ‘evidence ‘ required. eg the rationale and the case material and the supervisor's report.
- Comment on the supervisee's approach to counselling/psychotherapy and their use of supervision - see FAQ's on the BACP webpage, accreditation section, headed ‘Supervision', ‘Your supervisor/s' and ‘Case Material', in conjunction with the application pack.
- Have a look at the page from the Application pack entitled ‘BACP Counsellor/Psychotherapist Accreditation Scheme Guidance for the Supervisor which offers useful information about your role.
- Negotiate supervision time to discuss the questions in the supervisor's report with your supervisee, so that the completed report is a mutually agreed document.
What not to do
- Don't pre-assess your supervisee's application - that is the professional remit of Accreditation Assessors whose work is standardised and checked for quality and parity of the standard.
- Don't offer specific suggestions as to what the Accreditation criteria require.
- Don't share other's accreditation work with your supervisee - either your own or that of other supervisees or colleagues.
Resources/ workshops/FAQ's
- BACP website - Accreditation section, includes a comprehensive list of FAQ's about putting an Application together, plus a version of the Application pack;
- Accreditation Workshops are run throughout the UK on a regular basis - contact our Events team for details of where and when.