We present a guest post by Cathy Sparkes and Sam Simpson, SLTs who work together as intandem. Here are Cathy and Sam’s reflections on supervision.
Ask yourself this question: Am I looking after myself enough in these challenging times? If your answer is ‘no’ or ‘not sure’ then read on!
The service you work in is probably being exposed to job cuts, a reduction in CPD funding and the demand to maintain clinical standards with ever-shrinking resources. In the midst of this you still need to put yourself first by making sure you’re receiving the quantity and quality of supervision you need. Over the past decade we have been supporting SLTs to access and provide good quality supervision. However, we often find that people don’t know what supervision is, have never experienced it or think they haven’t got time for it.
Did you know that the RCSLT has recently revised their supervision guidelines? For those of you who are RCSLT members, you can read the document online.
The RCSLT differentiates between the following two forms of supervision:
- Line management supervision: which includes topics related to person specification, job description, caseload management, individual performance reviews, adherence to professional standards, and CPD.
- Clinical (non-managerial) supervision: which includes reflections on interventions, issues around the therapeutic relationship, and enabling the supervisee to talk about areas of their work that they’d like to be more effective in.
Specific reference is made to the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) which states:
“as an autonomous professional you need to make informed, reasoned decisions about your practice to ensure that you meet the standards that apply to you. This includes seeking advice and support from education providers, employers, colleagues and others to ensure that the wellbeing of service users is safeguarded at all times”
(HCPC Standards of Proficiency for Speech and Language Therapists)
If you’re interested in finding out more about supervision and want to reflect on your current supervisory arrangement, we regularly run training courses. Read all the details about our next course, on 15th February 2013, on our website.