IJSP Number 4, 2022

63 Competency-based clinical supervision dates back to the advent of the competence era in psychology and the recognition of the necessity to identify, assess, and train health and human services providers in psychology and mental health around designated competencies. The American Psychological Association convened The Competencies Conference heralding the future strategies in education and credentialing in professional psychology [6]. The initiative was organized around eight competency-focused work groups, one of which was designated as “Supervision” and coincided with the publication of Falender and Shafranske’s Clinical Supervision: A Competency-based Approach [1]. The conference was organized to enhance collaboration across constituencies to foster identification, training, and assessment of competencies during the training trajectory, culminating in the development of psychologists competent for practice [6]. A product of the Competencies Conference was a paper by the Supervision workgroup [1] published in a journal issue dedicated to the conference conclusions on respective competencies. Subsequent to the Competencies Conference, a task force was convened to develop guidelines for clinical supervision in Health Service Psychology. Guidelines addressed each of the identified domains: Supervisor competence, diversity, supervisory relationship, professionalism, assessment, evaluation, feedback and professional competence problems. Through intentional and systematic processes, a pathway for supervisors to conduct clinical supervision is provided. The urgency for this is great given the international attention to inadequate and harmful clinical supervision in the U.S. [7], Ireland [8], negative supervision events in South Africa [9] (unhelpful supervision in U.K. [10] and identification of barriers to research that have diminished attention to the necessity of excellent supervision [11]. Studies cite a high prevalence of harmful and inadequate supervision in the U.S., Ireland, and South Africa [9]. Ellis and colleagues [7] reported that 93% of a sample of 363 current supervisees experienced inadequate supervision and 35% were receiving harmful supervision. Categories include supervisor demonstrating behavior lacking sensitivity, accountability, and/or ethical considerations, failing to create a safe and supportive environment, and demonstrating limitations in the appropriate maintenance and sharing of knowledge and skills [12]. These represent failures of competence, relationship, and ethical practice, all structural components of clinical supervision. Attitudinal aspects of supervision are often neglected including respectful practice, honoring supervisee attitudes and creating a tone of cultural humility and caring. Other categories of supervisor error or omission include manifesting attitudes of disregard and disrespect, inadequate attention to alliance formation, to strains, ruptures, and repair, or simply a cursory attempt to do so, failure to infuse multicultural identities and cultural humility, misunderstanding of boundaries (as in being a “counselor” in supervision) and thus offering personal psychotherapeutic interventions to the supervisee, failure to identify and manage countertransference (of self and the supervisee), failure to establish a competencies frame, with attention to strengths and areas in development and ongoing feedback such that no evaluation is a surprise.