Katrina Millhagen
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This professional is accepting new clients but may have a waitlist. Please enquire with them directly to discuss availability.
Supervision details
The importance of supervision
Supervision is about offering a reflective process on the work that is undertaken with clients and on supporting and strengthening therapists in their practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy and/or art psychotherapy supervision and consultancy work, in order to offer clients, the best possible therapy. As therapists we need a place in which to consider and reflect on the practice with our clients. Engaging in supervision allows us to consider client progress. This may include what works well, what may work less well or some aspects that may require more attention. It is important to focus on the issues being addressed in your therapy sessions with clients, to review your approach in detail and to examine what issues conducting therapy is bringing up for you. Adequate time has to be available to cover a supervisee's client caseload. At least 1.5 hours per month is therefore usually set aside for supervision. The supervisee is encouraged to prepare for supervision in advance questions or issues to be addressed or explored.
My approach to supervision
In conducting supervision, my aim is to support you in order to help endorse, enrich and sustain good practice. I do not see my role as merely dispensing criticism, but as witnessing the therapeutic work so that I can help to refine your awareness of the process. Our sessions will help me develop a sense of how your therapeutic relationships with your clients are developing. I will also be able to gain an understanding of your responses and reflections.
Supervision in the Helping Professions Peter Hawkins and Robin Shohet is a clearly focused text on the supervision process which has become a valuable reference point for me. Their Seven-Eyed Model is very helpful. This model is relational because it focuses on the relationships between client, therapist and supervisor. It proposes a systemic approach which focuses on the interplay between each relationship and how this can be contextualised within the wider system.
Many issues can be explored in supervision, including transference and counter transference, aspects which may belong to therapy and not to supervision, defensiveness on a therapist's part or personal blind spots. Brigid Proctor (referenced in Hawkins and Shohet) refers to the need to help a supervisee feel received, valued and understood, as only then will the therapist feel safe enough to review and challenge him/herself (p.36.).
Within the modality of art psychotherapy, supervision addresses how to incorporate image making into the process of a psychotherapeutic relationship. Questions and discussions may include the way that the significance of an image can be sidelined if the image itself is not focused on in enough depth. For example, it may be that an image could be given too much space and attention, leaving inadequate time and space for verbal psychotherapy. It is important to emphasise that, in art psychotherapy, the images created by clients require the therapist’s full attention in order that the non-verbal aspects of the art processes can be reflected on adequately. Such explorations can make it possible to develop a new outlook on life. J. Shaverien (2007) focuses on the importance of reverie when creating and discussing images. G. Mc Neilly (2006), writing about group art therapy, examines ways in which the dynamic struggles of conscious and unconscious oppositional forces may play out continuously, both among clients and within the artworks, a process that can lead to greater inner harmony and useful self-exploration.
There are also relational aspects of therapist and client that require the attention of the supervisor. Stephen Mitchell (2000) in From Attachment to Intersubjectivity (p.142) explains that the therapist may usefully work through projections to allow clients to speak their minds. He stresses that being able to respond well to such stimuli may greatly enhance the efficacy of the sessions. He also describes common struggles around 'hate' and the emergence of warmer feelings and laughter in an illuminating way.
In Love’s Executioner and Tales About Psychotherapy Irvin Yalom, an existentialist practitioner, focuses on issues of transference and counter transference, as well as the potential assumptions and ‘blind spots’ that the therapist may have. He emphasises the need for therapists to bring themselves into the therapeutic relationship, to give feedback to clients and hear their feedback. He thus strongly supports relational aspects in both the encounter of therapy and the supervisory context.
The HCPC are an independent, UK-wide health regulator. They set standards of professional training, performance and conduct for 16 professions.
They keep a register of health professionals who meet their standards, and they take action if registered health professionals fall below those standards. They were created by a piece of legislation called the Health Professions Order 2001.
Registration means that a health professional meets national standards for their professional training, performance and conduct.
BACP is one of the UK’s leading professional bodies for counselling and psychotherapy with around 60,000 members. The Association has several different categories of membership, including Student Member, Individual Member, Registered Member MBACP, Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Accred) and Senior Registered Accredited Member MBACP (Snr Acccred).
Registered and accredited members are listed on the BACP Register, which shows that they have demonstrated BACP’s recommended standards for training, proficiency and ethical practice. The BACP Register was the first register of psychological therapists to be accredited by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
Accredited and senior accredited membership are voluntary categories for members who choose to undertake a rigorous application and assessment process to demonstrate additional standards around practice, training and supervision.
Individual members will have completed an appropriate counselling or psychotherapy course and started to practise, but they won’t appear on the BACP Register until they've demonstrated that they meet the standards for registration. Student members are still in the process of completing their training.
All members are bound by the BACP Ethical Framework and a Professional Conduct Procedure.
Accredited register membership
The Accredited Register Scheme was set up in 2013 by the Department of Health (DoH) as a way to recognise organisations that hold voluntary registers which meet certain standards. These standards are set by the Professional Standards Authority (PSA).
This therapist has indicated that they belong to an Accredited Register.
