President-Elect’s Message A New Opportunity


We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.


- Edith Lovejoy Pierce (English poetess)


Each year gives us the wonderful opportu- nity to continue with a renewed spirit and strength. Perhaps this year your New Year’s resolution will be to find a meaningful way to give back to the community of counsel- lors and psychotherapists. If you are an ex- perienced counsellor/psychotherapist you might consider clinical supervision as a way to “give back.”


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Providing professional development op- portunities and training in supervision is a relatively new focus for CCPA. Clinical su- pervision is an essential component of the ongoing professional development of the professional counsellor and student-coun- sellor. It is an activity that brings skilled su- pervisors and practitioners together in order to reflect upon their practice to ensure the welfare of the clients and the professional development of the counsellor.


Clinical supervision is an intervention provided by a senior member of a profession to a more junior member or members of that same profession. This relationship is evaluative and hierarchical, extends over time, and has the simultaneous purposes of enhancing the profes- sional functioning of the more junior person(s); monitoring the quality of professional services offered to the clients that she, he, or they see; and serving as a gatekeeper for those who are to enter the particular profession.


The growing importance and the essential nature of supervision are reflected in two


VOL. 45 NO. 1 | WINTER 2013


arenas: 1) the increasing competencies sought by professional bodies for counsel- ling therapists, psychologists, psychothera- pists, and mental health professionals and 2) in the demand for formal training of clini- cal supervisors. All counsellors and psycho- therapists, regardless of experience, need supervision. Not only do many professional bodies require that members be supervised; it is also seen by many as an ethical impera- tive.


Ethical Imperative


In provinces/territories that have statutory regulation of the activities and/or titles within the profession, it is mandatory to belong to the College in order to engage in the controlled activity or to use a protected title. Awareness of the requirements for supervision in one’s geographic area is es- sential. In areas that currently do not have statutory regulation, there are professional associations that voluntarily self-regulate to protect the public from potential harm. Requirements for supervision are part of the CCPA Code of Ethics and the registration regulations of Regulatory Colleges. The regulations are unique to each College and to each association.


The CCPA Code of Ethics clearly states an ongoing ethical obligation for supervision, “Counsellors take reasonable steps to ob- tain supervision and/or consultation with respect to their counselling practices and, particularly, with respect to doubts or uncer- tainties which may arise during their profes- sional work.


Qualifications of Supervisors


Because Regulatory Colleges focus their attention on candidates who wish to prac- tice the profession, the qualifications of the supervisors for those candidates are


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