Clinical Supervision Requirements and Supervisor/Supervisee Responsibilities
Two roles, one goal
Clinical supervision is both a gatekeeping function for the profession and a service to the client. The supervisor is legally and ethically accountable for the supervisee's clinical work within the supervisory relationship, must hold the qualifications the Board recognizes, must be available for consultation, must review cases, and must document each supervision session - date, duration, topics, cases reviewed, and hours accrued. The supervisee must disclose supervisory status to clients, give clients the supervisor's name and contact information, practice only within competence, and follow the supervision contract.
Essential documents: a written supervision contract specifying goals, methods, evaluation, and due-process procedures; a supervision plan; hour logs; and periodic written evaluations. Supervision is not therapy - a supervisor must not serve as the supervisee's personal counselor and should refer when personal issues interfere with practice.
Traps
Signing off on hours not earned; billing clients under the supervisor's license without genuine oversight; undocumented supervision by phone or text; assuming an employer can substitute for a board-approved supervisor; and confusing administrative supervision with clinical supervision, only the latter of which counts toward licensure.
Worked example
A supervisee reports that a client threatened a coworker. The supervisor helps the supervisee apply law and ethics - assess seriousness, take protective steps such as warning the identified target or contacting emergency services, and document - rather than taking over the case or advising the supervisee to "keep it in the room."
Rule of thumb: if it is not documented in the supervision record, it did not happen.