Mina De Pasquale MBACP (Accred). Supervisor and couple therapy

My aim is to create an effective supervisory alliance as this allows the supervisee and supervisor to collaborate in order to find the best way to help clients. The two parties involved aim to discuss, reflect and support each other to understand the client’s needs. It is important to acknowledge that the supervisor do not and cannot have all the answers. My role is rather to help the supervisee to make sense of what is happening in the therapeutic relationships with their clients, depending on their individual theoretical approach, therapeutic goals and the stage of therapy the client is at.

I use the Seven-eyed Model of Clinical Supervison (Hawkins and Shohet, 2007). This model identifies 7 possible ‘Modes’ of working within the supervisory relationship. This is a non-linear approach and one can switch between modes as required during the supervisory process. The appeal of this model to myself is that it integrates my preferred methodologies, these being psychodynamic and person-centred approaches, whilst adding additional dimensions to the process of supervision. It neatly incorporates the client-supervisee and the supervisee-supervisor elements allowing the focus of the supervision session to be clearly directed to a particular ‘mode’ depending on the issues arising. It is a very clear way of conceptualising the supervisory process and can help the supervisee quickly gain an understanding of the multiple relational influences that are exerting their effect.