It was not until the thirty‑ninth year of my career that I undertook training in professional supervision. In the days following the intandem Are you getting enough (1)? course, I asked myself two big questions:
- Where was the supervision in my early career?
- Do experienced professionals still benefit from supervision?
The early years: under the radar
As a student back in the 80s, the speech therapist who looked after us on our placements was said to ‘supervise’ us. That meant they set up an experience, dropped us in the deep end – and gave ‘feedback’. The terrors of a 20‑year‑old posing as a speech therapist and facing ‘feedback’ drove me far away from anything called supervision or feedback for about 20 years.
I later discovered that the feedback I collected from others was much more positive than the harsh judgements I gave myself, and I started to seek alternative perspectives to triangulate my questionable self‑image.
Looking back over a long career, I believe supervision was seldom mentioned until 12 years post‑qualification. Undertaking a management qualification with the Open University, I stumbled across the term and found that supervision was already a crucial part of a nurse’s CPD. This was the nineties, and a new era of accountability was emerging – we became concerned about quality, regulation and clinical governance.
Recalling ‘professional’ life before this point, I almost question my own memory. Did I really work as a newly qualified community SLT for a year before a line manager was identified? How was I accountable for the (dubious) quality of my work? How did my clinical skills develop solely by ‘experience’, and without any structured CPD? What was the impact, safety and outcome of my practice?
If you trained in the 21st century, you may view this narrative with incredulity, like an account of Victorian medicine. Memory is selective, but the absence of supervision is unmistakable. Yet out of this ‘trial and error’ era emerged a profession of great integrity and creativity, developing the standards, practices and ethics that the HCPC has upheld since 2003.
Finding my community
In mid‑career, as I was a pioneering SLT in the evolving specialism of dementia care, I relied on the growing expertise, research and philosophy of my peers (in a Special Interest Group or CEN) across the North of England. Meeting only twice a year, we shared case stories, asked questions, raised concerns and critiqued new ideas emerging from other professions.
This may be the root of the practice I now know as supervision: a safe space with consistent and accountable membership, providing structured learning opportunities which in turn enhanced the quality of our services, our skills and our wellbeing.
During a break in my clinical career, I refreshed my reflection skills while training as a coach. Naturally reflective, I had an advantage. I learned how to approach reflection through structure and adopted it into my practice.
So my journey into reflective practice, supervision and valuing feedback has been a fragmented one. And arranging valuable fragments may be how learning happens – until someone helps us place the pieces together. If this is the hard route to professional development, there must be an easier one.
I’m considering the opportunity we have to develop supervisory practice right from the very start of our professional lives, on clinical placements.
Most recently, as guidance for students, I wrote: “Learning to engage in supervision with your Practice Educator lays the foundation for successful engagement in professional supervision once you are registered.”
We need SLTs in training to first learn to become reflective practitioners, and then to invite their practice educators into their reflections to add a further dimension to their professional self‑awareness.
Aren’t the core skills of the PE creating a safe environment for the student to reflect on their development, using a coaching approach to draw out the student’s learning, offering feedback only to fill the gaps in the student’s own reflections?
And aren’t these also the very skills of the supervisor?
A great PE will be a powerful supervisor. A psychologically safe learning space, with carefully crafted questions that prompt deeper reflection, and feedback used prudently, supports the learning of NQPs, students or specialist learners alike. Likewise, an experienced supervisor will be an impactful and compassionate practice educator.
The journey from supervisee to supervisor (or to PE) is an evolving skillset: reflection, coaching, mentoring – roles within our profession that are distinct in nuance, but all founded on a vested interest in the professional development of one another.
Supervision for the long haul
So, having discovered how professional support has underpinned my reflective practice throughout my career, I am now clear what is required for supervision. I’m promoting the idea that supervision starts as a student and continues seamlessly into registered practice. I’m now asking myself is supervision needed for a veteran like me?
Does our professional maturity eventually reach a point when we are here to supervise but no longer need to be supervised? Or could supervision turn out to be the very thing that develops and sustains that maturity?
In midlife, through a career ‘pivot’, I coach mature professionals transitioning into the next chapter of their careers. Midlife presents a maelstrom of career challenges, unfulfilled ambitions, family responsibilities and personal aspirations which benefit from some untangling in the presence of a supportive peer who journeys through the complexity alongside them.
Amongst these experienced 50–70‑year‑olds, none has bottomed clinical competence, nobody is nonchalant about professional ethics or shrugs off work‑life balance. We continue – and increasingly – to struggle with the workload, prioritisation and ethical conundrum that is professional decision‑making.
Being a member of a professional community provides us with the travelling companions for our continuous – or lifelong – development. Whether your ‘wise owl’ is called a coach, a mentor, a friend or a supervisor, we do not walk the professional journey alone.
Mary Heritage
Coach, mentor, speech and language therapist
Reference
Heritage, M. (2026) Becoming a Speech and Language Therapist – An Essential Guide for Students. Routledge.
Contact:
www.maryheritage.co.uk