Dr Liddy Carver

Clinical Supervision
Supervision that combines clinical depth, relational thinking and critical reflection

I offer clinical supervision to counselling and psychotherapy practitioners who want more than a space to report on their caseload. My approach is grounded in the belief that good supervision should help practitioners think more deeply, practise more confidently and remain critically attentive to the power, complexity and ethical responsibility inherent in therapeutic work.

I am an experienced psychotherapist, researcher, educator and supervisor, with a professional background spanning clinical practice, counselling education, academic research and safeguarding. I hold a Level 7 Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Supervision from the University of Derby, maintain my own supervision and continuing professional development, and work with both experienced practitioners and trainees.

What makes my approach distinctive?
My supervisory practice is relational, integrative and reflexive, with a particular interest in the complexities that emerge when human relationships meet professional responsibility.

I am interested not only in what happened in the therapy room, but in what may be happening beneath it:

What is the client communicating, explicitly and implicitly?
What are you, as the therapist, experiencing in response?
What might be happening within the therapeutic relationship?
How might attachment, trauma or relational patterns be influencing the work?
What assumptions are shaping your formulation?
Where might power be operating?
What are you finding difficult to think about, tolerate or articulate?
How do ethical responsibilities, safeguarding and client autonomy intersect?
This means that supervision can become a place where practitioners develop not only greater confidence, but greater clinical discernment.

The therapist is part of the clinical picture
One of the central principles of my supervisory practice is that the therapist cannot be entirely separated from the therapeutic process.

Our responses to clients are not simply personal reactions to be removed from the work. They can provide important clinical information. At the same time, they need to be examined carefully.

I therefore encourage supervisees to become curious about their own responses:

What am I feeling?

What am I wanting to do?

What am I avoiding?

Why does this particular client or situation affect me in this way?

Could my response be telling me something about the client, the therapeutic relationship, myself—or a combination of all three?

This is where reflexivity becomes more than self-awareness. It becomes a clinical tool.

Working with complexity
My clinical and academic experience has given me a particular interest in complex presentations, including trauma, dissociation, self-harm, suicidal clients, relational difficulties and experiences of abuse and victimisation.

I am interested in helping supervisees resist the temptation to reduce complexity too quickly.

A diagnosis can be useful.

A formulation can be useful.

A therapeutic model can be useful.

But none should become a substitute for thinking.

Sometimes the most valuable supervisory question is not “What intervention should I use?” but:

“What are we not yet understanding about this client?”

This creates space for uncertainty, curiosity and alternative formulations, while retaining appropriate clinical accountability.

Power, voice and epistemic justice
A particularly distinctive aspect of my supervision arises from my academic work on epistemic injustice and the relationship between knowledge, power and lived experience.

Therapists occupy a position of professional authority. We use psychological concepts to describe and understand other people’s lives.

That authority needs to be handled carefully.

I encourage supervisees to consider whose knowledge is being privileged within their formulations and therapeutic decisions, and whether professional language might inadvertently obscure the client’s own understanding of their experience.

This does not mean abandoning professional expertise.

It means using it responsibly and collaboratively.

For me, supervision therefore involves asking not only whether an intervention is technically appropriate, but also whether the client’s voice, autonomy and lived experience remain visible within our clinical thinking.

Support and challenge
I believe effective supervision requires both psychological safety and intellectual challenge.

Supervisees need to be able to bring uncertainty, mistakes, difficult feelings and clinical dilemmas without fearing humiliation or judgement.

But supervision should not simply reassure.

There are times when a supervisor needs to challenge a formulation, question a boundary, explore a blind spot, raise a safeguarding concern or invite the practitioner to consider an alternative interpretation.

My aim is to offer challenge in a way that is thoughtful rather than punitive.

I want supervisees to leave supervision feeling that their thinking has been expanded, rather than simply approved or rejected.

Supervision as professional formation
For me, supervision is also about the development of professional identity.

This is particularly important for trainees and newly qualified therapists, who are learning not only how to practise but what it means to inhabit the role of therapist.

As practitioners become more experienced, the questions change.

Supervision may move from:

“Am I doing this correctly?”

towards:

“What kind of therapist am I becoming?”

and eventually:

“How do I want to practise when there is no obvious right answer?”

I see supervision as supporting that development.

It is a space in which professional knowledge, personal awareness, ethical responsibility and clinical judgement can gradually become integrated.

My responsibility as supervisor
I recognise that supervision itself involves a power relationship.

As supervisor, I have responsibilities for client safety, professional standards and the development of the supervisee. I therefore hold both a supportive and a gatekeeping function.

Confidentiality and trust are fundamental, but they exist within appropriate ethical and professional boundaries. Where significant concerns arise regarding safeguarding, competence or fitness to practise, these responsibilities cannot simply be set aside.

I believe that handling these tensions transparently is part of ethical supervision.

I also regard my own reflexivity as a supervisory responsibility. I continually examine how my assumptions, values, experiences and responses may influence the supervisory relationship. A supervisor cannot reasonably ask practitioners to engage in reflective practice while remaining exempt from it themselves.

A space for thinking
Ultimately, my distinctive approach to supervision is about creating a space in which practitioners can think.

Think about the client.

Think about the relationship.

Think about themselves.

Think about power.

Think about ethics.

Think about what they know—and what they may not yet know.

My role is not to become the person who has all the answers. It is to bring experience, knowledge, curiosity and appropriate challenge into a relationship in which the supervisee can develop their own increasingly sophisticated clinical judgement.

I offer supervision to trainees and experienced practitioners, including those working with complex trauma and relationally demanding clinical material.

If you are looking for supervision that combines warmth with rigour, clinical experience with intellectual curiosity, and support with constructive challenge, I would be pleased to discuss your supervision needs.