Clinical Supervision Working Agreement
A collaboratively constructed contract between clinical supervision partnersClinical Supervision Working Agreement
ACSA recommends that participants of clinical supervision use a working agreement or contract to frame their supervision experience. Working agreements serve to clarify goals, expectations and responsibilities, as well as keep both supervisor and supervisee safe in a bounded relationship. As clinical supervision is an interpersonal process, its success owes much to the quality of the alliance between supervisor and supervisee. When a collaboratively constructed contract is established, the quality and effectiveness of the supervisory relationship is enhanced with corresponding levels of satisfaction in outcomes. Some organisations and workplaces mandate a written clinical supervision working agreement as a condition of participation in clinical supervision. The agreement is usually reviewed regularly, which itself, becomes part of its contractual structure.
The advantages and disadvantages to using a clinical supervision working agreement are briefly summarised.
Advantages
- Contracts serve as a solid foundation for an effective supervisory relationship.
- They facilitate the sharing of desires and expectations of clinical supervision.
- Contracts help to promote agreement on the work to be conducted.
- They help to minimise the potential for any later problems.
Disadvantages
- There is little research evidence indicating that contracts ensure more effective clinical supervision.
- Contracts may restrict creativity and spontaneity in making accountabilities too rigid.
- Contracts can become meaningless when they are initiated for the sake of having a contract.
- Contracts can take a long time to establish.
Accountabilities to be considered for a clinical supervision agreement
- The names of the supervisor and supervisee.
- The supervisee’s goals of clinical supervision.
- Responsibilities of both supervisor and supervisee.
- The supervisor’s own supervision arrangements.
- Structure: frequency, duration (length of sessions), location.
- Documentation responsibilities.
- Responsibilities related to cancellations.
- Confidentiality issues, including limitations.
- How evaluation will occur.
- When reviews will occur (e.g., monthly, three-monthly).
- How conflicts will be addressed.
- Signatures of both the supervisor and supervisee.
- Date of contract, and subsequent anticipated reviews.
ACSA Working Agreements
Feel free to download and use the ACSA Working Agreements.
Individual CS Working Agreement
Group CS Working Agreement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.