Supervisors are to be mindful of the counsellor, the counsellor's clients, and the context in which the counsellor works. They are to undertake responsibility for the quality of the supervision provided. Their commitment to personal and professional development in the practice of supervision is required.

Ideally a supervisor should be able to offer in supervision -

  1. A therapeutic approach, including respect, empowerment, genuineness, congruence, confidentiality and clear self boundaries


  2. Counselling skills including empathy, immediacy, questioning, confronting, informing, guiding and contracting


  3. Specific supervisory skills such as process orientation, maintaining the focus on the client/counsellor system, awareness and use of parallel process, appropriate didactic input, hypothesising, checking out and offering choices, refusal to collude, flexibility, appropriate integration of agency accountability and guidelines within the supervisory process


  4. An integrated personal model of both counselling and supervision


  5. The capacity to use his/her personal history and personality in shaping supervisory style


  6. An awareness of the diversity of personal development paths


  7. An ability to work with supervisees presenting from a range of models of counselling


  8. Competence in identifying and evaluation of supervisee's personal and professional resources and performance


  9. The ability to negotiate an appropriate programme to meet the particular developmental needs of the supervise

Based on documentation of the 'Australian Association of Marriage and Family Counsellors Inc': used with permission

Eligibility to Supervise

Counsellors eligible to supervise must meet all of the following criteria -

  1. Be a Clinical or Professional Member of CASA or of a relevant professional association,

  2. Have a minimum of 5 years counselling experience and have logged a minimum of 750 post training client hours and 75 related professional supervision hours,

  3. Have professional indemnity insurance which includes cover for supervision

Accreditation by CASA as a Supervisor

Supervisors with appropriate experience and training may apply for accreditation.
Please refer to the documents below for further information.

Accreditation Policy (PDF)
Application for Accreditation as a Supervisor (PDF)