Nicola Houghton

Here is a little about me and how I supervise

Passionate about supervision and its potential to be transformative. I facilitate a supervision environment that enables inquiry, openness to difference, ethical exploration, restoration and life-long learning. I bring the relational qualities of warmth, generosity and humour.  I find, over time that active collaboration can create a dynamic space, where you can bring all of yourself, and your therapeutic work for good quality ethical supervision.

As a trained integrationist (Newman University), I work with an integrative, inclusive attitude. I enter the supervision relationship using a humanistic lens, with awareness of attachment relational dynamics. My evolved model of integration includes psychological education and active experimentation from TA and the Gestalt cycle of experience. I will attune to your expressed supervision needs, learning style and developmental stage as a therapist, working openly with the Seven Eyed Model of supervision.

I am a BACP accredited Counsellor and Supervisor. Column B for SCoPEd, with a Certificate in Therapeutic Counselling Supervision. Gained during my portfolio career as a Learning and Development Consultant, I am a Chartered Member of the Institute of Personnel and Development. For your supervision, this provides skilled application of the roles of Coach, Trainer, Ethical Consult and Mentor.

My Practice Description and some Niche area's

I have a full private practice working with individuals, couples and supervisee’s. Sessions are in-person, online or outside at a local nature reserve. Four days a week I am in the Leamington and Warwick area, and on Wednesdays I work in Birmingham City Centre as an associate of Birmingham Counselling Service.

Supervision sessions for qualified therapists are charged at £75 for ninety-minutes and £55 for sixty-minutes. In my mixed caseload I work with a maximum of two student counsellors, and I am open to negotiate a reduced session fee for their time in training.

I have some specialist ‘niche’ area’s that that may be of interest to you:

• I am a qualified Mindfulness Meditation teacher and practitioner. I teach blended interventions from Mindfulness Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy and Mindfulness Stress Reduction Programmes. These practices can be both facilitative for your therapeutic work and restorative for your own self-care.
• I have five years experience of facilitating clients to step outside into nature (safely and ethically). This gives space to explore our interconnectedness with the world with ‘nature as co-therapist’. This environment can facilitate ecological consciousness, mindfulness and movement.
• I particularly enjoy working with qualified therapists that are contemplating starting their own private practice.
• My current CPD focus is in exploring the links between therapeutic groups & communities and psychological safety, trust & social action.
• I have six years of working with Couples, my practice is guided by the Developmental Model of Couples Therapy, integrating the five stages of development in adult relationships across the life course, differentiation theory and its relationship to attachment theory.

Please make contact if you notice we may be a good match for your supervision needs now or for your planned development.

Making contact

If you are curious about the possibility of working together, please make contact and let us set up a call or zoom together.

I offer a free 30-minute call to explore our initial assessment of each other. We can discuss your needs for supervision and how I could be a fit for you. We can understand the practicalities for your supervision sessions, and then plan a sixty- or ninety-minute supervision session. Please bring a case or aspect of your work to mutually experiment and collaborate together.

After jointly evaluating our contact, if you wish to progress, we can formally contract our supervisory working agreement, bringing clarity of what we can expect from each other in the service of your supervision needs. I encourage mutual open review of our work at all times and plan for a formal collaborative review after the first six months, in line with the BACP (2018) ethical commitments for supervision.