Clinical Supervision
The clinical supervisor will serve in several roles during the course of clinical supervision for mental health and substance abuse counselors. These roles will consist of being a coach, mentor, teacher and administrator in order to best assist the supervisee during professional development. The clinical supervisors approach towards supervision stems from person-centered and cognitive-behavioral models. The supervisee will be challenged to explore their own thoughts, behaviors and feelings in a safe and trusting environment in order to gain self-understanding and enhance more productive outcomes of sessions with their consumers.
Clinical supervision is not therapy though there may be times when supervisees need to address personal issues and that self-disclosure can be utilized as a tool to allow supervisees to open up and address areas that may potentially interfere with the therapeutic process. However, the supervisee will be encouraged to seek out individual therapy to work through those issues in order to better address consumer needs during skill development.
As your clinical supervisor, performance will be evaluated, knowledge and skills, strengths/weaknesses, needs, attitudes and development as a counselor. Clinical supervision will consist of face-to-face meetings to include clinical review of cases, documentation review, treatment planning, direct supervision of services, audiotape review, consultation for crisis or clinical need and etc.
During the course of supervision and/or participating in a practicum/internship with a university, it is necessary to provide information of progress to the university and the Board of Georgia. For this reason, confidentiality during the course of supervision is limited. However, HIPAA rules/regulations and identified state licensing codes of ethics will be upheld. In the event that a consumer reports threats to harm self/others, child/elderly abuse or presentation of a court order, these will serve as cause for breech of confidentiality.
