Professional Supervision

Are you feeling "stuck" in your work with a child or teen?  Or just want to make sure you are following best evidence based practice? Or perhaps you’d like support working with the most complex of kids/teens/families/difficult situations?

We have some of our most experienced psychologists offering zoom/or face to face supervision or consultation. This supervision is suitable for psychologists, school counsellors, social workers, youth workers, teachers and others who work professionally with children or teens with mental health concerns.  

During these supervision sessions we help professionals (school counsellors, clinical or *registered psychologists or other registered health professionals):

• Learn to do brief and usable/editable case conceptualisations/trearment plans for each child/teen to help you feel more confident understanding what is happening and why.

• Identify and develop specific and practical transtheoretical trategies to use in sessions or work with children/teens (including handouts)

• Identify and manage your own difficult feelings (frustration, anxiety etc) about clients/parents and therapy work

• Support you to understand some of the ethical and professional issues which commonly arise when working with young people (including confidentiality issues and issues which arise when working with separated families, responding to subpoenas and complaints from caregivers)

Currently, Kirrilie Smout, Penny Sih, Jacinda Fisher, Megan Grigg, Kate Rooney, Taryn Gray and Carolyn Di Fiore are available to provide professional supervision. These psychologists have between 14 and 25 years of experience working exclusively with children, teens and families, and are APHRA Board Approved supervisors. We of course don’t have all the answers, but enjoy working to develop and support professionals own existing skills in this area. Please note that we are only able to take a set number of external supervisees each quarter, so please email us about availability.

For more information about our supervisors’ biographies, please click their photos below.

The cost of supervision is $195.27 (plus GST) for a 50 minute period (we use the last 10 minutes of the hour to write a few notes about goals/what we have discussed). Some workplaces will pay for professional supervision, whereas others cover this cost themselves - either way of course we provide you with a tax invoice (also please note that given our supervision sessions are booked in client spots, we do have to charge a $65 cancellation fee without a business day’s notice - thanks for your understanding).

We prefer that supervisees book a minimum of four (to six) supervision sessions (we prefer these to be either fortnightly or monthly, but bimonthly can also be accommodated).  This enables us to get to know you and your particular areas of challenge and provide the most effective supervision. After this initial block of four to six sessions, we can then book in another block of supervision sessions if desired. Please note, depending on their workplace, some supervisees “come with a friend” - in other words, our supervisors can work with two clinicians from the same workplace and discuss the shared issues together (cost for supervision with 2 people is one fee of $230 (plus GST) for both to attend.

We usually ask that supervisees prepare for supervision sessions by completing a case conceptualisation template (we will email to you) about at least one child/teen prior to the session.  We will cover one (or two children/teens) during each hour of supervision and/or a skill area.  This case conceptualisation sheet template is yours to keep and use in the future.  We believe it will help you think about clients in a way which will help you plan treatment more clearly.

NB: Note for pyschologist supervisees: Please note we do not currently supervise provisional psychologists and we can also only provide supervision to registered psychologists who are seeking clinical endorsement if we are their secondary supervisor.) If you are not a psychologist you can ignore this point.

If you would like to book a session with one of our supervisors, please email admin@developingminds.net.au or call us on (08) 8357 1711 and we can check availability and book in a time.

Online training for professionals working with 5 to 11 year olds

If you find it difficult to attend or skype for a full hour supervision, you might like to consider our online training programs (which includes a Q and A centre): www.calmkidpro.com

Calm Kid Pro includes short videos and resources for you to use with children in the therapy room, as well as professional learning modules.  

On this site you can log in to ask questions of our child psychologists on a daily basis.  This might be about a resource, tricky therapy situation, approach or other question.  Previous questions on our professionals forum include:

How to assist children who are ambivalent about custody arrangements
Resources for working with children on the spectrum
Getting parents of teenagers involved in therapy
Helping children with high levels of activity at school

For more information about Calm Kid Central for professionals, click here: www.calmkidpro.com