Purpose and Goals of Supervision for Counselors Essay
Brad Thayer
COUN5004 – Survey of Research in Human Development for Professional Counselors
07/26/2015
Dr. Barbara Cooper Purpose and Goals of Clinical Supervision for Counselors
Supervision can be a very foreign process to a mental health counselor when first starting their professional journey. In other professions supervision can mean addressing performance, administrative compliance and personnel concerns. In the field of mental health counseling the purpose of supervision is therapeutic and multifaceted. In order to explain the complexity of supervision for a mental health counselor it must be broken down into key areas. The first is the very definition of supervision. …show more content…
Reflective supervision, an adapted form of the developmental model, is focused on the cyclical relationship between supervisor and supervisee. The model focuses on stages of the relationship and how the interaction should look. The main phases in this model are: Contextual Orientation, Establishing Trust, Conceptual Development, and Clinical Independence. At each phase the supervisor will respond accordingly to provide support and assistance to their supervisee (Ward & House, 1998). The contextual phase in when the supervisor and supervisee are focused on establishing the context of their supervision to mitigate the possible sense professional inadequacy the supervisee might have. The establishing trust phase is when the supervisor develops an alliance with the supervisee focused on experiences to develop a positive learning environment. The conceptual development phase in when the supervisor promotes advanced conceptual complexity through reflective dialogue and questioning. The