IJSP Number 5, 2023

47 REVISITING COMPETENCE IN CLINICAL SUPERVISION FALENDER Carol A. 1 , SHAFRANSKE Edward P. 2 1 ,2 Graduate School of Education and Psychology, USA Emails: eshafran@pepperdine.edu, cfalender@gmail.com Abstract Competency-based approaches have been advocated in psychology graduate education and clinical training for over two decades, paralleling developments in medicine and other health professions. The competencies movement aimed at bringing greater accountability to the healthcare professions and to provide society with competent health service providers. Competency-based approaches to clinical supervision, including competency-based clinical supervision [1], [2] were developed to ensure the well-being of clients, facilitate the development of clinical competence, and protect the public. Although more than 6000 articles and books were published on clinical supervision from 2003-2021, relatively few explicitly focus on competence or competency-based approaches. And in practice, it appears that broad-based and systematic implementation of competency-based approaches has not been accomplished. The authors suggest that the failure to implement competency-based clinical supervision has significant consequences on mental health services. Effective, evidence-based services are critically needed given the increasing mental health acuity. The provision of evidence-based treatments requires the ’training-up’ of clinicians to establish competence in evidence- informed psychotherapy and psychosocial interventions. Developing competence would be best achieved through the use of competency-based approaches to training and clinical supervision. Barriers to implementation are discussed and a renewed call for implementation, including increased empirical research, is made. Key words: Clinical supervision, competency-based clinical supervision, clinical training, psychotherapy supervision, competency-based education, CBE 1. INTRODUCTION Throughout the past twenty years, we have strongly advocated for the implementation of competency-based approaches to psychology training, particularly in clinical supervision. In Clinical Supervision: A Competency-Based Approach [1] we presented a model that explicitly placed emphasis on the development of professional competence. We acknowledged that all supervision approaches (e.g., developmental or systems approaches) were intended to develop competence; however, we suggested that an explicit competency-based approach provided the best opportunity and furnished “an explicit framework and method to initiate, develop, implement, and evaluate the processes and outcomes of supervision” [1, p. 20].