Clinical supervision, although recommended by both the Australian Counselling Association and the British Association of Counselling and Psychotherapy, is not always provided for international school counsellors by their respective schools.
Clinical supervision is the process whereby a School Counsellor has confidential space once a month, usually for 90 minutes to discuss, evaluate and gain guidance on interventions for student issues. Not only this but Clinical Supervision is a way to ensure the mental health needs of your School Counsellor are met – helping them to process some of the emotional impact and secondary trauma of working with complex cases, and ensures, as far as possible, that they are fit to practice and are working safely with your students.
School counselling can be a lonely job. Due to it’s mainly confidential nature, counsellors do not always have someone they can offload to within the school and therefore the senior leadership team don’t always understand the realities of their role. So what do International School Counsellors bring to supervision? In terms of student issues, these are the top 5 for my supervisees:
- Abuse/Domestic Violence/Neglect:
Always a difficult one to deal with, particularly in countries where the laws are not geared up to prosecuting offenders. On the international scene, additional difficulties arise when the offender is the one with the work permit. We work through the counsellors feelings which inevitably arise, interventions and how to support students when confidentiality is broken because of harm to the child. - Behavioral Issues:
Behaviour always tells us something – but what? These are the discussions that are useful in supervision and figuring out interventions for classroom management. Disruptive behaviour in terms of aggression, self-control, defiance, inappropriate sexualised behaviour and frequent emotional outbursts can be symptomatic of many different things, and this problem-solving and intervention planning is often brought to clinical supervision, especially when there is a lack of outside services in-country or a reluctance on the part of parents to access help. - ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) / ADHD (Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder): The third top issue brought to clinical supervision is ASD and ADHD in children, whether suspected or diagnosed. How to talk to parents about assessments and the types of accomodations that may be needed, through to how to make counselling spaces more neuro-divergent friendly are common conversations in supervision.
- Self-Harm / Suicidal Ideation/Attempts:
Clinical interventions to work with self-injury and debriefing School Counsellors when faced with self injury or suicide is a core of the clinical supervision role. Working with depressed and suicidal young people can be hugely emotionally taxing and if adequate support is not given for your School Counsellor then they are at risk of burnout. Having said that, they are the person best placed within your school to undertake suicide & self injury risk assessments. - Substance Use/Addiction:
Finally at number 5 is substance use and addiction. This has become increasingly discussed in supervision in recent years, as many students, when caught with drugs, alcohol or nicotine products are sent for mandatory school counselling. For school counsellors, who usually see students on a voluntary basis, this can be difficult and they have sought help from supervision for ideas about how to engage young people in this situation and also which approaches work best when helping young people overcome addictive behaviours.
These 5 issues will not be what the school counselling team deal with the most. My guess that will be something like friendships and relationships breakdown, or academic anxiety and stress. For your school counselling team this is their bread and butter – they don’t need support to do 90% of their job – supervision helps with the 10% “sharp end”. It is also dealing with and listening to the “little stuff” that students trust you with the “big stuff”.
I have some limited spaces left for clinical supervision for the 25/26 academic year. Please get in touch if you would like to see if I am a good fit. Please note I am only able to provide supervision at 4-5.30pm (ICT) during weekdays and have some limited availiability on Saturday mornings.
Aylssa Temple 