Clinical Supervision Overview 2024-03-20T10:23:09+00:00

Welcome to Clinical Supervision

“Supervision can be about shoring up skills and competence, strategising professional development paths, a training ground to develop newly learned skills, and it can be a restorative place where you can safely discuss professional concerns and build your confidence”

Family & domestic violence case worker

Professional Supervision

Reflective Clinical Supervision | Consultation Supervision

All types of supervision that is provided externally by a trained and experienced professional supervisor defines supervision as being at the heart of continuing professional development (CPD) for all helping professionals. It is the ‘go to place’ for safely sharing reflections about your work and professional identity, organisational impacts and your work with your clients. It is a place to turn to for engaging in honest exploration regarding ethical dilemmas, role complexity, internalised conflicts, skills acquisition and self care practices guided by a trusting, safe and genuinely interested supervisor. I provide Online and Telephone Reflective Clinical Supervision using a trauma informed approach where appropriate so that you are able to work with me from your resilience skills. I help you to articulate various accounts of your work, challenges and successes for us to explore and expand on together. Where supervision is not provided within your workplace you may consider obtaining it externally. Workplaces may also value the opportunity for external supervision and may contribute to your investment in your own CPD by allowing time off in lieu.

There is no set amount of supervision hours to participate in but every reason to ‘turn up’ to an opportunity to obtain external support and skills development.

Consultation Clinical Supervision

If you are in a position where your role and career development does not have the requirement to engage in a set number of hours per year for your CPD you may benefit from using clinical supervision as a consultation.

Unlike engaging in a regular supervisory relationship where there is an evaluative element that oversees your work, consultation supervision is engaged in on an ‘as needs’ basis. Experiences are shared, a collaborative problem solving process is utilised with guidance and tuition on specific skills development and strategies able to be sought at the request of the supervisee.

You can book a session when you need with sessions being sporadic and based on your creation of a specific agenda for us to focus on. This takes away from your engagement in regularly ‘turning up’ monthly to a  yearly supervision contract and gives you flexibility. 

Consultation Clinical Supervision provides:

▲ Advice in specialty areas such as Mental Health, Family & Domestic Violence, Psychotherapy & Counselling, Personal Wellbeing skills development, Burn-Out prevention, Trauma-Informed Approaches, Self Awareness Development and Personal Leadership skills.

▲ Guidance and education where appropriate.

▲ Provides solution ideas to increase success and achieve specific goals.

▲ Complex case conceptualisation

▲ To individuals and organisations offering an objective perspective, guidance, making recommendations, providing tailored analysis and new perspectives to improve specific individual staff, team and management practices.

Use Consultation Clinical Supervision instead of engaging in regular Clinical Supervision

Staff can choose to use consultation on an ‘as needs’ basis for a wide range of reasons including when:

❖ They have specific challenging situations, casework or client service delivery scenarios occuring in their work role. They can benefit from the expertise of the supervisor to be able to help them to clearly identify and correctly conceptualise problem areas, provide guidance and education for improvement where necessary.

❖ Are unable to access regular reflective clinical supervision.

❖ Can only access clinical supervision infrequently due to work demands.

❖ Have multiple concerns and/or responsibilities that would benefit from obtaining clarity using an objective perspective to create a doable plan of action they are able to try.

❖ Would benefit from accessing mentoring, coaching and teaching approaches to identify and accelerate specific relevant skill building.

❖ Require a specific focus on only one aspect of their work role such as developing emotional intelligence skills, wellbeing practices and how to do them, a chance to practice various communication skills relevant to dealing with challenging interactions and ways to handle transitions in professional role and workplace.

❖ Create Self Care/Wellbeing and Professional Development Plans.

MAKE AN ENQUIRY

Clinical Supervision with a mental health specialty Social Worker

Provision of supervision for various professions, roles and programs such as:

Heads of Departments, Social Workers, Youth Workers, Doctors, Psychologists, Clinical Leads, Occupational Therapists, Team Leaders, Counsellors, Support Workers, Pastoral Care workers, Financial Counsellors, Teachers.

Specialties areas include Mental Health, Medical Specialists, Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Palliative Care, Advocates and Outreach Support, Counselling children, Hospital Social Work, Aged Care, Family Therapy, Domestic Violence, Post release offender programs, Youth engagement, youth outreach, Corrective services, Out of home care, Financial Counselling, Disability.

Integrated reflective clinical supervision model

Supervision for Leadership roles & Mentoring for Personal Leadership skills development

Flexible options for engaging in Clinical Supervision:

Online Supervision sessions

  • Telephone Sessions
  • Video-conferencing meetings
  • Email support
  • Reading materials
  • Case Study reviews
  • Access to Leadership Videos and Podcasts
  • Adjustable frequency of supervision sessions

Supervision topic

Becoming a social worker means:

Working out how to actually co-create a trusting helping relationship that can actively promote client empowerment and client self determination.

Working through differing values. Increasing your self awareness and self management of your own values alongside of drawing out, respecting and assisting clients to elevate theirs.

Slowing down the process of truly understanding your role. Learning about ways to avoid role conflict and confusion. Managing professional boundaries and various biases.

Tracking how your initial personal goals and your personal values can help to shape your developing professional identity. Ways to stay in touch with those personal values that sit well with those of the profession.

Having a trusted and experienced social worker alongside to help you to talk about, gain insight and understanding of the various complex team and management dynamics that shape and impact on your daily work role.

Working out how to manage conflicting work demands, ways to empower yourself to minimise your  risks for excessive work demands and encouragement and mentoring to enable you to self advocate for your role and for the rights of your clients.

Supervision Topic

Becoming a Support Worker, Advocate, Mental Health worker means: 

Working with your supervisor to ensure that you are understanding and reviewing the current risks of your supported person associated with suicidality and deliberate self harm.

Making sure that your level of training and the limits and expectations of your role match in a good and productive way. Addressing any role confusion so you can be clear about what you can and cannot do in your job.

Discussing your ongoing professional development training options such as doing Mental health first aid training and other relevant trainings such as Motivational Interviewing, Substance Abuse, Trauma Informed approaches, Recovery Focussed model for mental health, Strengths Based support, Counselling Skills, Professional Boundaries, Having Difficult Conversations, De-escalating Conflict, Emotional or Self Regulation skills, Systemic Advocacy, Aboriginal Mental Health First Aid and Cultural Awareness  training, Group Facilitation and Family Meeting skills.

Exploring your own ‘triggers’ for personal stress and creating your own emotional safety and self care management plans.

Discussing how burn out happens, ways to prevent vicarious impacts that can occur when listening to and observing your supported person’s experiences and working out ways to take a trauma informed approach to safeguard your own mental health and to protect and honour yourself where there is your own lived experience.

Exploring ways to develop your ability to provide clear, interpersonal communication skills that are vital to helping those for whom you provide support. To practice this skills set so that you can help people to create their own authentic goals and achieve their own increased self management.

Working out ways that best suit you to be able to manage conflicting work demands, high workloads, team dynamics, conflict and any interpersonal problems.

Learning what personal skills you can bring into your work to help you to build better professional supportive relationships where you can do more of what matters as specific and unique to each person’s priorities rather than striving to ‘fix’ or ‘change’ the people you support.

Having space to discuss the fit of your current work role with your own career progression and personal goals. Exploring your own motivation for maintaining the role as support worker and/or advocate in a complex and under resourced sector.

Engaging in an environment created with your supervisor that is regular, calm, emotionally regulated and productive so that you may achieve the benefits of structured reflection time.