We all start out with dreams and ideas about how our careers will go. It’s hard to foresee when, where or why the forks in the road will come, but it is almost certain that they will. This blog post explores two key ways in which supervision helped me to negotiate a fork in the path, keep hold of my dreams and step into independent practice.
Seventeen years ago, I embarked on a career in Speech and Language Therapy, with a dream to become a neuro rehab therapist. In the early stages of my career I was fortunate to have some great supervisors (also my managers), who nurtured my enthusiasm for neuro rehab.
In 2008, I took a senior post in a small department without access to clinical supervision within the organisation. I was holding a complex caseload, but for the first time also dealing with wider departmental and organisational issues. I felt the need for external supervision to develop my practice and take care of myself as I entered a more challenging stage of my career.
My line manager continued to oversee my work in post, particularly supporting my CPD, and helping me develop the SLT department. The separation of my clinical supervision to another time and place enabled me to attend to the needs of my clients, as well as my own needs, within this increasingly challenging work context. Through external clinical supervision, I had the freedom to reflect on the needs of my clients more deeply and my own journey more broadly.
Hawkins and Shohet (2007) discuss self-care as an important aspect of clinical supervision. Drawing an analogy between the ‘good enough helping professional ‘ and Donald Winnacott’s concept of the ‘good enough mother’. The ‘good enough mother’ may struggle to cope with the rigours of motherhood without the help and support of another adult, just as the helping professional may struggle to cope without the support of a supervisor. At this point in my career, I was faced daily with the devastating reality of people’s lives following brain injury. I was starting to develop quite strong ideas about addressing these needs with clients but also felt frustrated by the difficulties of achieving gains for my clients. I could easily have been worn down by these frustrations, but with wise and meaningful supervision, these difficult experiences ‘….. were survived, reflected upon and learnt from’ (Hawkins and Shohet, 2007). Through supervision, I became much more conscious of my concern to address my client’s ability to participate in their chosen life roles and started to think about how I could facilitate this for them.
It was at this time that my own personal circumstances changed. With a young family I was keen to be as present at home as much as possible without completely losing connection with my profession. I started to explore how to manage this change in my life and find a way to continue working within my chosen specialism.
Cathy and Sam have written about the changing role of supervision which ‘….. has now extended to one that supports and facilitates emotional resilience, opens up possibilities where there seem to be very few and fosters an individual’s personal/ professional resources to manage change’ (Bulletin, February 2013).
With this changing picture, refined by my professional interest and constrained by my personal circumstances, my supervisor helped me to consider diverse options as I stood at this fork in the road. I don’t remember who initiated the idea of independent practice, but I know that this path seemed daunting, much less travelled and insecure. I didn’t know how to begin walking away from the security of paid employment.
The supervisory relationship was a place of safety that allowed me to: test out ideas, evaluate the pros and cons of working independently, make plans and connections, review early steps and ask silly questions. I saw my first independent client in 2009, nearly six years ago. The transition to independent practice has been necessarily slow as I have been at home with my family, but this has brought with it opportunity to reflect on each small step in supervision and build slowly in confidence. With my supervisor’s support this process has been much smoother and more satisfying than it might have been as early ideas have come to fruition.
Work is not how I envisaged it seventeen years ago, but it does really work for me in the context of my life now. However, I could so easily have missed this path if I had not been able to access great supervision at the fork in the road.
Mary Ganpatsingh
www.communicationchanges.co.uk
@Comm_Changes
References
Supervision in the Helping Professions, 3rd edition (2007), Hawkins, P. and Shohet, R.
Supporting robust supervision practice, Sparkes, C. and Simpson, S. (February, 2013) Bulletin