I need help with my week 3 assignment

Running head: SUPERVISION 0

Supervision

Introduction to Marriage, Couple, and Family Counseling

COUN-6201F-6

September 18, 2016

Using the systemic developmental supervision model outlined in the Carlson and Lambie (2012) article, explain how you might support James, the supervisee in the case study at the end of the article.

There seem to be a lot of supervision styles that can be used to help the supervisee to become a better counselor and have diversity when working with clients. “Although there are a variety of developmental supervisory approaches, they all share fundamental tenets including (a) supervisees’ move through levels of development based on their interaction with their environment and (b) supervisors identify and match the supervisees’ level of development to promote their growth” (Carlson & Lambie, 2012).

Although there are several developmental models, Carlson and Lambie (2012) states that Systemic-Developmental Supervision (SDS) views supervisees as moving through developmental levels based on interactions with the environment and experience. There are three levels that were mainly discussed which are the beginning, intermediate, and experienced family counselors. In James’s case presented in the article, I would first recognize James as being an intermediate family counselor because according to Carlson and Lambie (2012) Table 1 I feel that he has knows how to deal with his anxiety to a point and his has some confidence in himself. He does seem to be very smart and shows empathy in his clients. After reading about his case with the married couple of ten years, I feel that he might be straddling between beginning and intermediate levels. I say this because he seems to have high anxiety and low self-confidence when working with the husband. As James’s supervisor I need to make sure that I am not counseling him but helping him grow as a marriage counselor and not becoming his personal counselor. Because I see that James anxiety level is high I will try to help him lower this anxiety by discussing his genogram to assist in identifying where this high anxiety is coming from. According to the article, James wants “to be liked” and this derives from his “disgruntled relationship with his father” (Carlson & Lambie, 2012). I would ask James what the goal of his counseling session with the couple is and remind him that we need to stick to that goal which is to get the couple back together and trusting one another. I know there will be times where counselors will have difficult time with their clients but we have to as counselors put our personal needs aside and deal with the needs to the clients. I would continue to advise and guide James to creating his own style of counseling and how to better deal with his relationship with Tim. He first needs to let Tim know that questioning his methods or approach to counseling them is not important and try to get Tim back on track with the situation at hand.

Explore the core components of systemic supervision that are integrated in the Systemic Developmental Supervision model.

“Systemic Developmental Supervision (SDS) is designed to support family counseling student interns’ professional development and skill acquisition and thus promote their effectiveness with diverse client populations” (Carlson & Lambie, 2012). It is one supervision methods used in counseling that builds rapport between the supervisor and the supervisee. The supervisor is usually an licensed, very knowledgeable, and experienced counselor who trains, mentors, guides, educates and supervises the professional development of a student intern. The supervisee accomplishes professional growth through self-awareness and acquirement of skills.

Life Span Developmental Model and Integrated Developmental Model are other examples of supervision models but SDS brings all of those models together. The intern counselor has the opportunity to accomplish professional growth, obtain new skills, and expand and improve the old ones. According to Carlson & Lambie (2012) Table 1, there are 3 levels of family counseling development. The first level is the beginning family counselor who presents high levels of anxiety, low self-esteem and self-confidence, and low autonomy. In this case the supervisor assesses the level of anxiety, provides a structured environment, provide lots of encouragement, role-play situations to help the supervisee, and observe the supervisee often for feedback. The second level is the intermediate family counselor where the supervisee anxiety level is not as high and his confidence is higher but still needs guidance. In this level the supervisor may role-play, genogram, and use interpersonal process recall (IPR) to help the intern to recall thoughts, feelings, intentions, and expectations. With IPR the supervisor critiques the sessions of the intern to see what could have been done differently by asking more questions or asking questions in a different way. The third level is the experienced family counselor that probably already holds an associate counseling license. They tend to be more confident with higher self-esteem, and better deal with different client situations. The supervisor at this level actively listens, can use self-disclosure, and show support to the supervisee.

Explain how the supervisor’s role may shift depending on the developmental level of the supervisee.

The supervisor’s role may shift depending on the developmental level of the supervisee because a supervisor of a beginner counselor have to be more supportive, pay close attention to the anxiety level, be very encouraging, and show more guidance by providing feedback often. In the beginning the cases assigned to the supervisee might seem easy to help boost confidence in the counselor. As the supervisee grows, so does the difficulty in the cases. The supervisor may use IPR to help the counselor and guide him to be better in his style of counseling. As stated in the article by Carlson & Lamie (2012), “Counselors at the Intermediate Family Counselor level are in a state of confusion because they yearn for more freedom but still feel dependent on the supervisor’s direction.” The counselor can regress to the beginning level if the case get too overwhelming so this is something that the supervisor has to keep an eye out for. To help the supervisee, the supervisor can role-play a scenario where the supervisor is the client and the supervisee is the counselor. This way the supervisor can help the supervisee by providing feedback on his style.

I have to agree with the Life Span Developmental Model when it says that “development continues beyond graduate training and lasts the span of a lifetime” (Carlson & Lamie, 2012). I believe that no matter how much we develop as counselors that there will always be more that we can learn because we will come across different kinds of people constantly.

References

Carlson, R. G., & Lambie, G. W. (2012). Systemic–developmental supervision clinical supervisory approach for family counseling student interns. The Family Journal, 20(1), 29-36. doi:10.1177/1066480711419809

McQuellon, R. P. (1982). Interpersonal process recall.