Becoming a supervisor is part of the typical career trajectory for qualified counsellors and psychotherapists. Once we feel established and confident in our practitioner skills we can start to consider developing the new competencies required to support our colleagues in their clinical practice. Being a senior level therapist is not quite enough in contemporary times to become a supervisor, with professional bodies now generally requiring a formal course of study in supervision to be undertaken.
So, if you are a general counsellor or psychotherapist, why would you choose to study Clinical Supervision with a specialist sex and relationship therapy institute?
As specialists in sex and relationship therapy we are uniquely placed to support your development into supervision practice, regardless of your modality or client base. Why? Because we have a very clear understanding of those aspects of supervision that are the most worrying for supervisors;
- The identification and management of safeguarding issues related to sexual offending, intimate partner violence, sexual violence and childhood sexual abuse.
- The impact of love and erotic transference in therapeutic relationships.
- Contemporary perspectives on erotic diversity.
- Contemporary perspectives on sex, gender and relationship diversity and the appropriate use of language in these dimensions of personhood.
- Complex relational dynamics and how they apply to the supervisor, supervisee and client triad.
Consider these scenarios…
Your supervisee tells you that their client has just revealed that their partner is controlling their finances and restricting access to their friends and relatives. What safeguarding steps need to be taken?
Your supervisee comes into their session alarmed. Their client has just told them that they enjoy watching their neighbours with their binoculars under the guise of ‘bird watching’. The supervisee feels sure this is a criminal act. Is it?
You notice that your supervisee brings the same client to each session and lingers over their description of the deep quality of their alliance with this client. They tell you that they could work with this client ‘all day long’ and had no idea they could feel such a connection to anyone other than their own intimate partner. How would you address this with your supervisee?
Your supervisee has a client who is active in the kink scene and is presenting to therapy with historical childhood sexual abuse. Would you automatically connect those two aspects of the client’s life?
Your supervisee works primarily with LGBTQ+ clients and your own clinical experience does not typically include this group. Your supervisee gets increasingly frustrated that you misgender their clients. How confident would you be in holding gender diversity in client and supervisee identities?
Your supervisee tells you that their client is having an affair and your supervisee feels like they are colluding in a betrayal. How would you approach this with your supervisee?
You feel intimidated by your supervisee. Even though they are recently qualified they have complete confidence in their abilities and generally dismiss your perspectives on their work. What framework do you have for understanding and addressing these dynamics?
Our Diploma in Clinical Supervision will equip you to hold these, and many other, dimensions of safeguarding, diversity and inclusive supervisory practice beyond dominant heteronormative perspectives, within the scaffold of contemporary supervision theory and skills.
Our Course Directors Rima Hawkins and Silva Neves are both UKCP Registrants as well as COSRT Accredited Sex and Relationship therapists and Supervisors and their teaching is deeply embedded in general psychotherapeutic thinking. Their sex and relationship therapy knowledge is just that extra special bonus that training with CICS brings to your professional development.
Apply for the 2023 intake of the CICS Diploma in Clinical Supervision here.
