A supervision service for professional psychotherapists, counsellors and coaches in the West Midlands — individually or in small groups.
There are many different supervisory models, but one of the most commonly used is the seven-eyed model, developed by Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet and covered in detail in their book Supervision in the Helping Professions. It provides a very useful framework for supervisory sessions and includes the different areas that supervision can focus on; it can act as a checklist for supervisors and supervisees alike.
The seven modes of supervision
- Focus on the client and how they present. What actually happened in sessions with clients, how they presented themselves, what they chose to discuss and how this relates to previous sessions — helping the therapist pay attention to their clients, their clients’ choices, and the connections between aspects of their situation.
- Exploration of the strategies and interventions used by the therapist. Which ones, when, and why they were used — helping to develop alternative strategies and interventions and to discuss potential consequences, increasing the range available to the therapist.
- Exploration of the relationship between the client and the therapist. What is happening in the relationships between the therapist and their clients — building greater insight into and understanding of those dynamics.
- Focus on the therapist. How the therapist is affected by their work, both consciously and subconsciously, and how they deal with this — including their wellbeing and development — increasing their capacity to engage with clients and handle their own responses.
- Focus on the supervisory relationship. Ensuring the supervisor–therapist relationship is working well, and exploring how the therapist–client relationships may be playing out or paralleling within it.
- The supervisor focusing on their own process. The supervisor pays attention to what they are experiencing in sessions, using their own responses as another source of information for the therapist.
- Focus on the wider context in which the work happens. The context of the clients, the therapist’s profession, the various relationships involved, and the wider world of the therapist and supervisor.
Supervision should involve all seven of the above modes, though not necessarily in every session, and their use will vary with the developmental stage of the therapist. A therapist new to the work will want to focus mainly on the content of their client work and the detail of each session, along with understanding the wider context — modes 1 and 7. With more experience, mode 2 comes into play; as the therapist develops further, all modes have their place in the supervision.
See business terms for supervision contract arrangements, and fees for rates.