Assignment : Supervision and Competence

As discussed in this module, the purpose of clinical supervision is to ensure the welfare of the client, help the supervisee grow professionally, and provide remediation services if necessary.

Supervision is a distinct professional activity aimed at helping the supervisee enhance his or her level of professional competence and is used both pre- and post-licensure. Your discussion in this module has two parts related to the issues of supervision and competence.

In the first part, you will identify what characteristics make a competent supervisor and how you can identify these characteristics in real life. In the second part, you will discuss regulatory bodies and their roles in protecting clients and the public from unethical behavior on the part of counseling professionals.

The purpose of this assignment is for you to understand not only resources, which are available to you (i.e., clinical supervision), but also regulatory agencies, which protect the public from harm by professionals.

Tasks:

In a minimum of 300 words, respond to the following (Note: Please include both parts of this assignment as one post):

Part 1: In your training, you will work with a clinical supervisor for practicum and internship experiences:

Discuss what according to you constitutes a competent supervisor.

Discuss how a supervisor's competence can best be assessed or determined.

Part 2: Take the perspective of a licensed or credentialed professional counselor (whose financial livelihood depends upon being perceived as a competent and well-prepared professional):

How should regulatory agencies (for the sake of this discussion, this includes "gatekeeping" bodies such as counselor training programs, licensure boards, credentialing bodies, and professional membership associations) best carry out the responsibility to work in the best interest of counselors while simultaneously trying to protect clients and the public from unethical behavior by counselors?

For example, the inherent conflict of a professional association (i.e., ACA) trying to provide resources and professional advocacy for counselors while also being responsible for the ethical adjudication of code violations. Your answer should relate to gatekeeping, remediation, and requirements for getting and maintaining licensure.

As part of your responses, you must specifically integrate the following:

Your understanding of how at least one specific standard from the ACA Code of Ethics and one specific standard from the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC) Code of Ethics relate to the positions you include in your post.

Your understanding of how at least two peer-reviewed sources support the positions you include in your post.

Your understanding of laws related to post-master's supervised internships and requirements for getting licensed.

Support your discussion with resources from professional literature in your response. Professional literature may include the Argosy University online library resources; relevant textbooks; peer-reviewed journal articles; and websites created by professional organizations, agencies, or institutions (.edu or .gov).

Remember: Do not directly quote from these sources without providing your own analysis and summary of the information-demonstrate that you understand the concepts being discussed and that you are able to apply your readings to real-life clinical work.

Direct quotations should support your own positions-they may not serve as your response.

Copying and pasting content, apart from properly citing it, is plagiarism and is not acceptable.

Any direct quotations must be noted as such in proper APA style. Again, you are required to provide specific examples to illustrate your points.

Read all of your classmates' postings and comment on current practices or additional strategies to use when writing your response to other students' postings. Think about the language you use to comment constructively on other students' posts. Do not just say "I agree" or "good job."