Dr Paul Hapney

To assist you to be therapist you would like to be, I do not see my task as telling you how you should practice.  Apart from matters of safeguarding wherein more specifiic direction and advice may be required, I feel it is not helpful that I encourage you to act in certain ways. This approach to supervision stems from my belief that therapists need to find a way to work - which is likely to draw upon a variety of sources - in a way that fits with their character and personal outlook. Indeed, this topic formed a central plank of my doctoral thesis disseration (which, for interested persons, can be easily accessed via a google search).

Like in my personal practice, my approach to supervison is informed by a way of working that prioritises the relationship, is characterised by a creative drawing upon of multiple theories, is informed by research, but above all else prioritises the person and voice of the supervisee.  Although having a broad and multifaceted training, the models that fit best with me, and thus are most readily accessible in my thinking, are of a humanistic, existential, and psychodynamic nature. Put simply, relational models.