Supervision: Children and Young People’s Mental Health and Wellbeing Services, PG Cert

What the supervisor will do in your service

Supervisors undertake a range of activities in their service during the training year:

• Provide weekly clinical supervision to at least one trainee practitioner.

• Deliver individual and, where appropriate, group supervision.

• Oversee trainee clinical work in line with evidence-based practice.

• Support trainees working across a range of settings including child and adolescent mental health services, community and/or schools (as required).

• Apply supervision models aligned with low and high-intensity interventions.

• Participate in supervision of their own supervisory practice within the service.

• Supervise trainees in specific modalities (e.g., cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), CWP, EMHP, autism and learning disabilities) ensuring supervision aligns with modality-specific competencies and evidence-based approaches.

• Support trainees to meet professional registration requirements, e.g., British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies (BABCP) or British Psychological Society (BPS) where applicable.

Supervisors remain embedded within your service and continue contributing to clinical delivery and workforce development.

What the supervisor must achieve (service requirements)

Supervision practice requirements:

• Provide a minimum of 35 hours of supervision across the training year.

• Supervise at least one trainee, with exposure to a range of clinical presentations.

• Supervise a minimum of eight completed cases completed by their supervisee(s) with children and young people, parents or carers.

• Demonstrate competence in supervising evidence-based interventions, particularly CBT or CBT-informed approaches where relevant.

• Ensure supervision provided is clearly differentiated from line management and case management functions.

Core competencies to be developed in the service:

• Delivering evidence-based clinical supervision.

• Applying supervision models and competency frameworks to supervision practice.

• Using feedback and outcome measures in supervision.

• Supporting trainee development and clinical decision-making.

• Working with diversity and difference in supervision contexts.

• Providing supervision for working with neurodivergent children and young people and incorporating contextual/systemic factors (e.g., social model of disability).

Benefits for services

Participating in the Supervision Programme provides:

Supervisors trained through the programme play a key role in ensuring that children, young people and families receive effective, timely and evidence-based care.

Responsibilities for service managers

To support a supervisor on the programme, services must:

Provide time for training and teaching

• Release supervisors for approximately 17–19 teaching days across the year.

• Support attendance at lectures, workshops, and practice tutor groups.

• Enable participation in study days and protected learning time.

• Provide clear organisational support for course completion (e.g., protected study time, reduced caseload where required).

Support supervision delivery

• Ensure supervisors have access to appropriate trainees to supervise.

• Support scheduling of weekly supervision sessions.

• Enable supervisors to meet required supervision hours and number of cases supervised.

• Ensure appropriate modality-specific supervision arrangements are in place (e.g., CBT-qualified supervisors for CBT trainees or external supervision arrangements where needed).

Support assessment requirements

Supervisors are required to complete:

• a critical evaluation (essay)

• a reflective essay

• a video-recorded supervision session with reflective analysis

• a supervision portfolio

Services should support safe recording and storage of supervision sessions and ensure governance processes for consent and confidentiality are followed.

Support infrastructure and resources

• Ensure access to video recording equipment and secure systems (e.g., Microsoft Teams).

• Arrange appropriate IT access and administrative support.

• Have an awareness of course timelines, teaching days and deadlines.

Supervision of supervisory practice

As part of the Supervision course, it is essential that supervisors receive at least 12 hours of site-specific supervision of supervisory practice from their workplace. This is different from their own clinical supervision and line management and must be specifically supervision of their clinical supervisory practice.

It should be provided by a suitably qualified and experienced clinical supervisor, as per relevant national accrediting organisation guidance. Ideally, the supervisor should hold a children and young people’s mental health postgraduate supervision qualification and/or equivalent, substantial experience of providing supervision in the modality that is being provided, and ideally good levels of familiarity with the SAGE tool.

Live supervision methods should be included and can include video and/or audio recordings of your supervisory practice.

Supervision of supervisory practice may be one-to-one and/or in groups – ideally of no more than four.

Key service considerations

• Supervisors must balance clinical, supervisory, and academic responsibilities.

• Services should plan workload adjustments accordingly.

• Early planning for caseloads and supervision structures is essential.

• Supervision must align with national workforce transformation priorities and evidence-based practice standards – please refer to the course handbook for more information.

• Managers play a key role in ensuring supervisors can meet both academic and clinical expectations of the programme.

Contact

For questions about supporting a trainee, timelines, or suitability, please contact:

• Services nominating candidates: cypptworkforce@annafreud.org.

• Prospective students: supervision@annafreud.org.

Further course information is available on the UCL postgraduate programmes webpage.