Reflective practice criterion 9 - video transcript

Karen Lloyd: In this section we will cover the reflective practice criterion 9 practice and supervision. This has six sub criterion 9.1 through to 9.6. So for criterion 9 you have up to 3,000 words in which to demonstrate the way in which you work in practice and the way that you are working in. The case material must be consistent with how you've already told us you work when you wrote your criterion 8. So you can choose to write about one client or you can choose to present two separate pieces of case material that in total add up to 3,000 words. The whole of the submission for criterion 9 must be case material and we want you to address the six sub criterion within the case material - so from 9.1 right through to 9.6 all of that must be case material. 9.1 is really showing us that your practice is consistent with the theories and the rationale that you described to us in criterion 8.

If it's different, you are likely to be deferred. So if you had to describe your way of working as being largely person centred and you had given a good rationale for that way of working, but then in your case study you were being quite directive and you were perhaps introducing a CBT behavioural experiment or a gestalt experiment or something, you would be likely to be deferred because your described way of working isn't matching what you're actually doing in practice. When we look at 9.2 we are asking you to tell us how your awareness of yourself was used in support of that therapeutic relationship, so when you're describing your case material we need you to tell us about your awareness of your own thoughts and feelings and responses to the client's material as the work unfolded, and what you did as a result of that. Now as I said before, there are always issues of difference and equality between us as a therapist and every client that we work with. For 9.3 we want you to demonstrate to us how your awareness of issues of difference and equality impacted on this therapeutic relationship. So what we mean by that is how did issues of difference and equality impact on this particular client in this case study that you are writing about.

We also want you to tell us how you are able to draw on the BACP Ethical Framework for Good Practice in Counselling and Psychotherapy [now Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions] specifically with the client that you've chosen to write about. So coming back to the pitfalls that people find themselves falling into, sometimes people will write about their adherence to the Ethical Framework in general but they don't write case material. And actually what we want you to do is to demonstrate it in practice by using case material. And preferably using the same case, we want you to tell us how you use supervision in order to raise awareness of the work, because what we want you to do is tell us how you reflected on this case with your supervisor or in your supervision group. What was the awareness that you gained from reflecting on the work in supervision? And then for 9.6, how did you apply that awareness and practice when you went back into the counselling room?

Now occasionally people have chosen to submit two pieces of case material and they’ve submitted one for criterion 9.1 through to 9.4 and then they’ve chosen a different piece of case material to submit for 9.5 and 9.6. That’s quite difficult for you to do because we have nothing to contextualise the use of supervision if you've used a different case for 9.5 and 9.6. So what we would prefer you to do is to either choose one case and write about criterion 9.1 right through to 9.6, all the way through up to 3,000 words, or if you were working in two different settings and may be working quite differently in the two different settings. you may choose to write about two different clients and you would try and address 9.1 through to 9.6 with both of those pieces of case material. So you don't have to address all of those criterion on both cases but you need to have met the criterion in one or the other of them.

What we would like you to do is to make it very clear at the beginning of your submission for criterion 9 whether you intend to write about one case or whether you are going to submit two separate pieces of case material. Then we would like you to write case material that addresses criterion 9.1 right through to 9.6. It's very confusing for the assessor if you mix and match and weave those two clients in together. So either write one longer piece of case material where you address all the sub criterion, or you may say I work in a primary school and I also work in private practice and so you’re going to do ... submit two different pieces of case material, because you work slightly differently in the two different settings. You may be working in a time-limited way for instance in one setting and using largely let’s say CBT if you work in a IAPT setting or a GP surgery or something. And then in your private practice you might do open ended work where there is no time limit and you may be using more of a person centred way of working, in which case you might choose to illustrate how you work by writing about two separate cases.

Before we move on can I just say a couple of words about criterion 9.4 and the Ethical Framework, appreciating that we are making this video for the web site today and the ethical framework is under review. Currently the one that we're working to is obviously is the version from 2013 and it is called the Ethical Framework for Counselling and Psychotherapy. A long, long time ago it used to be called the BACP Code of Ethics which is now obsolete. If you make references to the BACP Code of Ethics you're likely to be deferred because it doesn't demonstrate that your ethical thinking is up-to-date with what's in the framework. Secondly this is quite a long document and we are very aware that you're not going to be able to demonstrate all the principles of the Ethical Framework within the context of one piece of counselling casework. So people have tried to write things underneath all of these different headings, and miraculously some people manage to do that, and I'm always very impressed when they do but it isn't necessary. So we just want you to tell us how you’ve used your ethical thinking and how you have drawn on the Ethical Framework in this case material that you're writing about.

Now criterion 9.5 and 9.6 again, how you're using your clinical supervision is of interest to us because if we’d have put trainee practitioners there tends to be an over-reliance on supervision, and supervision can often be quite directive for new counselling practitioners or trainee counselling practitioners. We're looking to see that you were using your supervision in a consultative way and that you’re reflecting on your practice with your supervisor, or maybe reflecting on it after you've had supervision, and that you are able to apply the awareness gained in practice when you go back into the counselling room. We're looking to understand how you're using your supervision on an ongoing basis. So the reason for that is that we want you to demonstrate to us how you have used the awareness from your supervision with that client when you go back into the counselling room, so it wouldn't be helpful for you to choose to write about some supervision that you did after the work had finished with a particular client. Similarly occasionally an applicant has written about having used their internal supervisor but actually that's not what the criterion is asking for. We're asking you very clearly to tell us about awareness that you have gained through consulting on this piece of work in supervision, and to demonstrate how you apply the awareness in practice when you went back into the counselling room.