Supervision is a supportive, developmental process where a therapist can review their client work with their clinical supervisor with the intention of delivering the best possible service to clients in a safe, ethical way. The supervisor will not usually give advice, but will encourage the therapist to reflect on and evaluate their case work, their approach to their client/s and their own developmental process as therapists. The NCH supports a goal orientated, solution focused approach to supervision.
The NCH requires that registered members for the first three years of qualified practice and 300 client hours, undertake a minimum of 30 minutes per month, or an average of six hours per year of contracted supervision with an NCH-listed supervisor. It is at the supervisor’s discretion to determine the amount and frequency of supervision proportionate to the number of clients seen and this may be above the minimum requirement.
After three years and 300 client hours registered members may opt to undertake regular appropriate peer supervision with an Accredited member of the NCH, however all members are encouraged to continue in formal supervision.
Registered members may apply to upgrade to Accredited level membership after three years and 300 hours experience (provided requirements are met). Accredited members are also still encouraged to continue with a formal supervision arrangement, although they may choose to make peer supervision arrangements with another Accredited member.
You will still be required to receive NCH supervision even if:
- This is not the main body of your work/income.
- You receive supervision from a supervisor outside the NCH for your work in other disciplines. You will need to be in NCH supervision for the first three years and 300 hours of your hypnotherapy practice.
Yes – this can be done by simply logging into the member area of the NCH website and going to your customer profile where you will find a drop down list of NCH recognised supervisors to select from.
If you change supervisors, we ask that you remember to update your details online as soon as possible. When members change supervisors we ask the new and former supervisor to have a discussion to confirm that the member has met the regular supervision requirements. The new supervisor will thus know if the supervision period needs to be extended to take account of any missing supervision sessions.
You can notify us that you are in peer supervision in a similar way, choosing this as your elected supervision option.
You will be asked to choose your supervisor as a condition of being listed on our site as a hypnotherapy practitioner. If you do not choose your supervisor, you will be set to ‘non-practising’ in the database, meaning that you will not be shown to the public as a therapist. This will be automatically removed once you choose your supervisor from the drop-down list.
We appreciate that life can get busy and on occasion supervision may have to be changed or a regular monthly meeting can be missed. We ask you to keep your supervisor informed of your current situation and any changes you may need to make.
Occasionally, supervisors tell us that a supervisee has lost contact, usually when a member has failed to respond to messages after multiple missed sessions. If we are unable to contact the member, we will remove the supervisor from their profile and set them to non-practising until they contact us with their updated supervision arrangements.
If you are an Accredited member and hold the HPD you can apply to join the NCH Supervision Course, which follows the solution focused model of supervision as well as looking at the history of supervision, practical sessions, risk, boundaries and ethics.
As evidence of your learning, you are required to complete a portfolio over the course of a year. This is a large piece of work, and potential supervisors should therefore consider whether they are able both to attend the course and to commit to the portfolio before they join. An assessor will help you by reviewing your portfolio work and giving feedback.
Once your portfolio is completed and verified you can be listed on the NCH website as a Supervisor and in our journal as available to accept supervisees.
This is the approach the NCH have been using to train our NCH supervisors since 2010. It has two key concepts at its heart:
- Knowing where you want to get to. Identifying at the start of a supervision session the outcome you want to achieve means that we can get there much more quickly and easily.
- Trusting that the supervisee has the answers. Solution-focused supervisors are trained to ask focused questions; the answers to these questions will help a supervisee understand the issue they are facing with more clarity and identify solutions quickly. We all have the ability to find solutions for ourselves. Supervisors facilitate this process.
There are four key functions to supervision:
- Advising
- Supporting/sharing
- Teaching
- Monitoring/evaluating
With very new practitioners there may be more sharing of information. As the hypnotherapist develops their skills, knowledge and experience, the supervisor will engage less closely, using questioning techniques so the supervisee feels empowered to provide their own solutions to their own issues.
Through this process supervisees develop their supervision skills across four core functions:
- Case presentation
- Therapeutic skills
- Emotional awareness
- Self-evaluation
We expect our Supervisors to:
- Comply with the NCH Code of Ethics and be aware of the particular supervision requirements;
- Maintain good boundaries with supervisees;
- Keep the NCH Director of Supervision updated when a Registered Member misses more than three supervisions (i.e. has not been in supervision for three months);
- Notify the Standards Officer of any concerns regarding a Supervisee’s practice you are unable to address through supervision;
- Contact the Ethics Director if you require clarification on any points of the Code;
- Review your list of supervisees and notify the Training Officer if amendments need to be made;
- Keep comprehensive notes of supervision sessions. These may be called on by the NCH Executive in the event of complaints or practice concerns.
Supervisors who trained since 2011 must hold the solution-focused Supervision qualification. Supervisors listed who were trained prior to this date may not follow the current solution-focused model of Supervision although they will be highly experienced NCH Supervisors.