What is supervision?

The word has many meanings. It means to oversee and holds some connotations of authority and a hierarchical form of learning. It is used in counselling and psychotherapy in the medical and nursing fields in social work and in aspects of teaching and general care of others. It implies a code of conduct and it carries an element of protection and safety in its overall application.

Holloway 1992 says that supervision provides an opportunity for the student to capture the essence of the psychotherapeutic process as it is articulated and modelled by the supervisor thus recreating it in the counselling relationship.

Lambert 1980 described supervision as part of an overall training of mental health professionals that deals with modifying their actual in-therapy behaviours.

In general supervision may be seen as either training supervision or consultative supervision. Supervision is part of the overall training and educational needs of the health professional and there are many supervision model and styles to look at.

Here at the Institute we are offering a five-day course spread over a period of eight months. We will look at the meaning of supervision as it applies in your field of work whether you work individually or in a group setting, in psychotherapy, counselling or in the areas of social work, nursing, clinical psychology or psychiatry or indeed any of the caring professions.