Supervision: Advanced Topics, Ethics, and Law

Fulfills Requirement: Supervision

This course approved for New Jersey social workers.

Note: For those licensed in CA, BBS does NOT permit any single course to fulfill requirements for BOTH Law & Ethics and Supervision. This course fulfills requirements for one or the other, but not both.

Supervision in therapy exists at the crossroads of therapy and supervision. Knowing when to help supervisees examine and develop their therapy skills and when to help them examine themselves requires significant skill and awareness on the supervisor’s part. Effective supervision combines evaluation of the supervisee, skills training, and transference and countertransference issues both as they pertain to the supervisee’s work with clients and between the supervisee and supervisor. In addition to professional obligations, the supervisor also has legal liabilities and obligations to both the supervisee and to the supervisee’s clients.

This intermediate level course, consisting of four podcast interviews (transcripts provided) and four articles, reviews the above-mentioned issues and also explains what the codes of ethics of professional mental health associations require of supervisors.

Part One covers the principles of effective and ethical supervision and presents a Personal Construct Model to help orient the supervisor. Part Two presents in detail the ethical obligations and ramifications of supervision and includes a podcast with Dr. Frederick Reamer who helped develop the Code of Ethics of the National Association of Social Workers. Part Three presents podcast interviews with Dr. Marty Klein who discusses the special issues and pitfalls present in supervising therapists who work with sexual issues. Part Four discusses the special supervision issues raised by the growing use of online therapy and online supervision & Telesupervision. In the last section, additional resources and references are provided for further study, but they are not part of the course.