ALPHA
Counselling & Coaching for Well-being
Supervision

I have been a full member with New Zealand Association of Counsellors (NZAC) for over 5 years and gained my Masters in Counselling at The University of Auckland in 2020. My counselling training was founded upon Carl Rogers' Person-Centred Counselling and pluralistic theories which have become a cornerstone to my supervision practice.

 

Supervision is for the benefit of the client, and an underlying principle is that the client is best served by supervision that enables the supervisee to become the best counsellor they can be. I believe in the value of supervision having always engaged in and continuing to engage in regular supervision with my supervisor. I have found it invaluable to my growth as a counsellor and supervisor and most of all learning how to best support my clients and supervisees. Merry (2002) states that a key feature of person-centred supervision is the focus on the supervisee, “so that they can explore non-defensively what the counselling process means to them, and how they experience themselves in relationship with their clients” (p. 173). This has been helpful for me, and I understand how important it is to have a supervisor with whom you feel you have the right 'fit' and with whom you can co-create a safe space to explore your practice. In my first session, it is a time to get to know each other, working out if we are the right fit and spending time on contracting what helpful supervision will look like.

 

Hawkins and McMahon (2020) describe supervision as: "... a joint endeavour in which a practitioner, with the help of a supervisor, attends to their clients, themselves as part of their client-practitioner relationships, and the wider systemic and ecological contexts, and by so doing improves the quality of their work, transforms their client relationships, continuously develops themselves, their practice and wider profession" (p.67).

 

Expanding upon the three underpinning processes common to numerous supervision models that include: supporting the supervisee, educating and growing through ongoing professional learning, and maintaining counselling work is appropriate and falls within defined ethical and professional standards, the Seven-Eyed Model of Supervision (Hawkins & Shohet, 2003) informs my practice, alongside aspects of solution-focused supervision.

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