Meeting Supervision Requirements in Counselling Training: Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Ken Kelly: Supervision hours: meeting course requirements. Oh my goodness, the confusion that comes up on this one, Rory.

Rory Lees-Oakes: Yes. And I think that every year, come August when the results are in, there is gonna be a disappointed student who realises that they’ve not either accrued enough supervised hours in their practice based course to qualify, or they made some rookie errors and they’ve not had their hours signed off.

So I’ll start off by saying that, when you do a counselling course, certainly at practice level, so I’m talking of diploma here in the UK, diploma and above diploma degree, master’s degree, where you have to have a hundred supervised hours to meet the course requirements, you have to do the in-class work but also you have to have a hundred supervised hours usually at a placement. It’s a non-negotiable. Not a, it would be nice if, or wouldn’t it be lovely if we could, it’s an absolute non-negotiable. And I think what causes students a lot of confusion is that sometimes that’s not driven in hard enough.

I’m sure tutors listen to this are saying, we do Rory, we do drive it in hard enough. But I think it’s something that students sometimes struggle to comprehend. You have to be supervised for every client hour that you have, and there are supervision ratios. Now, because of different exam boards, they have different ratios to ethical bodies.

And I’m not gonna go too much into the weeds on that, but what I’m going to say is the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy say that you should have one and a half hours a month of therapy and of supervision. And if you see more than four clients in a week, you should have at least one hour a fortnight.

So you need to think about how often you go to supervision, and the thing is, it’s per month. You know what can happen is that some people stray over or they forget. I’ve had students forget, oh, I forgot to go to supervision this week, and we have to take the big red pen and say, how many hours have you accrued in this month? I’ve done 20 hours. We put a big red pen through it and say, you can’t submit those ’cause they’re unsupervised hours.

And the other rookie mistake that people make is that, say for instance you’ve got 98 hours and you’re covered to the end of your course, and you think, oh, I’ve got 98 hours. Then you get to 99, then you get to a hundred, you think, great. I’ve done it. I’ve got a hundred hours.

Sometimes that two hours between 98 and a hundred is sent off to the ethical to the marking body, the exam board if you like, but it’s not supervised because someone’s thought it’s only two hours and I can wait another month and get those two hours supervised at the end of the month.

Every single hour, and I do sound like I’m training being a teacher again, every single hour needs to be supervised. And what I would say is that if you are thinking of doing a practice-based qualification in the UK, you need to have a strong conversation with yourself about, A, the cost of supervision, because for most students it’s paid for. And also if you’ve got the capacity to have it.

I see occasionally people writing I can’t make supervision every month ’cause they’ve got all the commitments. I’m afraid you can’t do that. You really can’t pick and choose. It’s a non-negotiable, and I’m sorry if I’m coming across as a bit kind of teachery, but it is terrible to see the disappointment on students’ faces when you’ve told ’em and told them, and they still haven’t applied what’s been told.

And of course they don’t pass, it’s not a great conversation to have, Ken.

Ken Kelly: It’s not, and I get that you say, oh, I’m coming across all preachy here, but you’re doing it from a good place. Certainly when we were teaching together, it was a source of high referral. The students would be putting in their final portfolios. We’d ask them, are you sure if all of your hours are supervised? Yes, they’re all supervised. Handed in for external marketing, and surely enough a couple would come back and need revisiting. And it can happen unintentionally, it can happen that maybe your supervisor gets ill. You get ill and are not able to go to supervision.

And it’s about thinking how you work with that and how you can gain those supervised hours. And I think that the language is misunderstood because we often hear students speaking about their a hundred hours, oh, I need to get a hundred hours. But what they’re leaving out is the word supervised.

Yep. If they’re not supervised, they do not count. It doesn’t matter how attentive you were or how incredible that session was, or what the incredible if that hour has not been taken to your supervisor and falls within the correct ratio, it just doesn’t count. And it’s sad and it may feel unfair, but I get why it’s there.

Because we are meant to do a minimum of 100 supervised hours to evidence that we understand what we’re doing and that we have a second person, the supervisor say, yes, this person has brought these clients to me, and they know what they’re doing. They can go out now and be a qualified counsellor, so it is, it’s tricky. And we just don’t want you to fall at that. Rory, with that being said, any tips on how to keep your hours so that you don’t fall into that trap?

Rory Lees-Oakes: Yes, strangely enough, I do. What I suggest is that when you go to your first supervision meeting, you take any documentation that relates to the amount of hours you have to have of supervision to pass the course. Now, I’ve supervised many students and the first conversation I have with a supervisor is bring in any documentation that you have regarding the hours and which exam board are you with. And then what I do is, I go and look at the exam board in my own time and I print off the documentation.

So the first meeting when we’re talking about that is are we on the same page? Have we got the right documentation? Now, a lot of examples because this isn’t something that just happens with one example. There are lots of students who, at the end of their two year course or three year course, have got their hours a bit muddled up.

They now have very robust documentation. And certainly when I supervised I had to fill a form in. I filled a form in every single time I saw the supervisee. And we worked the hours out and we did, we accrued it as we went. And part of supervision was we would sit down and we’d say, let’s have a look where you are with your hours.

How many are supervised? I would say, that looks okay to me. And there was one occasion when I, and I can’t remember, either I was unwell or the supervisee was unwell and it went over by seven days. And I remember this because it was a February and February is quite a short month. So I went into the a warding body or the exam boards policies, and found that there was a mitigation document in extraordinary circumstances, you could actually claim seven days over the ratio if you put a letter in from your supervisor.

So I put that in and I wrote a covering letter to the exam board saying I’m such and such a body supervisor, I am claiming mitigation on behalf of my supervisee, as discussed in your policy for going over, and I put the dates in, and you know what? They were fine with it. They were absolutely fine. Signed off all the hours. That person came in one day dancing and singing, dancing the jig and singing the song, saying they’d passed, all their hours were passed.

But you need to get that discipline, and that paperwork, and you and your supervisor working together from the get go. Because it’s no good coming after say 80 hours and saying we have to have this amount of supervision. And the supervisor’s saying, I didn’t know that.

And some supervisors don’t know the ratios to be fair. So I think, yeah, my best advice would be get the documentation, show it to the supervisor, and get the supervisor working with you. That’s what a good supervisor should do with a student. You should be working not only with building their support of the client, but they should also be helping them where they can with the requirements of the course.

Ken Kelly: Yes, 100%. That is your best friend, as it were. I know your supervisor’s not your best friend, but they are your best friend when it comes to how many hours of supervision do I need for my training course? How many times do I need to see you? If I’m in these placements and doing this many hours within those placements, ask your supervisor and work it out together rather than asking your peers, because peers may not have the full picture of that.

And you said maybe some supervisors wouldn’t have that information. I would implore you, if your supervisor doesn’t have that information, get them to find out because they are there in service, to hold you through your practice. And if they are supervising your hours of your study you need to know that you are on the same page there and they can find out.

And I’m sure if you ask them that, they will. So the NCPS, the National Counselling and Psychotherapy Society recommends that counsellors in full-time practice receive at least 1.55 hours of supervision per month. However, and this is always the bit that gets people, the amount of supervision required may vary based on the counsellor’s experience, the type of work being done, or the client group that they’re working with.

And this is for qualified therapists here, this should be discussed with the supervisor and adjusted accordingly. That’s your person to go to, your supervisor. If you’re a student, it’s slightly different. But keeping a record of your supervision is not just for students.

We are audited as counsellors and psychotherapists by our ethical bodies, or we can be. At any stage, they can turn around and say, show me your CPD log, your continuing professional development log, and show me the work that you’ve done, and show me your supervised hours. And certainly if you’re going for accreditation, you might have to evidence 450 supervised hours.

So it’s really good practice as a student to have a method of capturing the hours of practice you do and then having them signed off by a supervisor in the right ratio and continue doing that throughout your practice. There’s no reason to stop when you graduate and say that’s it.

If you can’t evidence supervised hours, you do have to start again with those hours.

It’s important. I think do it properly, get it right the first time. And then continue doing it throughout your practice.

Rory Lees-Oakes: Wise words, Ken, wise words. And I’m sure that at least one listener will be panicking, thinking, oh my goodness, have I got my hours right, and I don’t know what to do.

If you are unsure, then the next supervision session you have with your supervisor, ask. Make it an agenda point because, if for some reason, and it does happen, if for some reason there’s a bit of drift it’s a lot easier to address it immediately than it is to come to the end of your course, get to the finishing line, and find out you’ve gotta do another 30 hours.

So start now. And the other thing is, the only hours that count, in other words, what really gets you your qualification is what the exam board asks you for. So different exam boards have different ratios.

Go onto their website, find the counselling diploma or whatever qualification you’re doing, find supervised hours and take it out.

And I do have to say that it can be a little bit confusing for tutors as well. it’s a very precise calculation. So if you’re a little concerned, a little worried about it, start that investigation now.

It’s good and worth checking and get your supervisor on board, and then, you’ve got all the bases covered really.

Ken Kelly: Very much so.

This is the paperwork stuff that you would want to sort out with your supervisor before going into practice so that it is understood so that you are a hundred percent sure your supervisor is a hundred percent sure of what that looks like.

And then you don’t have to worry about that. If you’ve got a process in place where you know that those hours are gonna be supervised, you know how many client hours you’re doing, you know how often you need to visit your supervisor, then that’s all taken care of and it’s one less thing to worry about.

Because it can cause panic, and the last thing you need is panic up around the time when you’re handing in your portfolio. You’ve got enough work to do at the end of all those years of study. You don’t need a additional pressures on you at that time. So there it is, supervision, required supervision hours.

• 5 hours of supervision per month, and
• At least one hour of supervision per fortnight if you see more than four clients weekly.

• A minimum of 1.5 hours per month, with the possibility of adjustments depending on the counsellor’s experience and client group.

Ken Kelly,
qualified counsellor, clinical supervisor, counselling tutor and author