Show Notes

Kayla:  Welcome back to the Designer Practice Podcast, and I’m your host, Kayla Das. If you’re a therapist who has struggled finding a clinical supervisor, then you’re not alone.

In this episode, Catherine Moore and I sit down for a collaborative podcast episode to discuss six ways to find a clinical supervisor.

Regardless of whether you’re a Canadian or an American listener, there’s something in this episode for you so that you can find your next clinical supervisor.

Now let’s dive in.

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Kayla: Hi everybody, my name is Kayla Das. I’m here with Catherine Moore and we are today doing a very special podcast where it’s a collaborative podcast where you may be listening to this podcast on either the Designer Practice Podcast, which is my podcast, or Catherine’s on Social Workers Rise podcast.

Catherine: Yes, I’m really excited. This is the first time that either of us have been doing it. So, if we’re awkward, just bear with us, we’ll get through it and it’ll be great. It’s going to be so much fun.

So my name is Catherine Moore. I am an LCSW based out of Southern California, and I do a couple of different things. One, like Kayla mentioned, I have the Social Workers Rise podcast. You can find it on all major platforms. Two, I do teletherapy, I do coaching, public speaking, and professional development training. I own the Rise Directory, which is a directory for clinical supervisors. And I also have the Social Work Clinical Supervision Log, which is a super duper nifty tool that you can find on Amazon. So, I like to stay busy, and today, my friends, we have a special treat for you because we’re going to be talking about six ways that you can find a clinical supervisor. Are you ready Kayla? Let’s hop into it.

Kayla: I am so excited. So, I am going to introduce myself. So, I’m Kayla Das. I am a registered social worker in Edmonton, Alberta. I’m also a business coach for therapists and coaches. And as I mentioned earlier, I am the host of the Designer Practice Podcast. I also host a mini podcast called Your Clinical Supervisor’s Couch podcast as well. So, If you want to check out either of those podcasts, please do. We’re on Apple, Spotify, the Designer Practice Podcast is also on YouTube.

I’m also the creator of the Canadian Clinical Supervision Therapist Directory. So, kind of giving a spoiler, but Catherine and I are both going to be talking about our directories at the end of this podcast as well.

So, Catherine, without further ado, let’s dive into these six ways to find a clinical supervisor.

Catherine: Yes, let’s do it. So, the way that we kind of organized it is, we came up with the six main ways that people find clinical supervisors. Being that Kayla and I both have directories, we’ve done a lot of research on this. And this is what we found. Okay, so we’re going to go from I don’t want to say the worst, but the bottom of the list all the way up to the top. So where we think that it is the best and most efficient way to find a clinical supervisor.

So, if you are looking for a clinical supervisor, listen up, this episode is for you.

Number six: Place of employment.

And we have pros and cons for this. Kayla, you want to jump in?

Kayla: Yes. So, we’re going to start with the pros.

So first of all, most of us have had clinical supervisors at our place of employment, especially if you work in a clinical setting like a hospital. Although you may still have a clinical supervisor in a not for profit or some other public center. What’s really great about a clinical supervisor at your place of employment, this is cost friendly. Typically, you do not have to pay for those. They are free, they are accessible. And they’re also easy to access, because chances are, they’re just down the hall from you. They’re not very far away. And even if you have to walk a few steps, maybe to a different part of the hospital, or a different part of the building usually they’re pretty easy to find.

Catherine: Yes, and with that said, there are some cons to this. Con number one is this is often your boss, which I feel like it could be both right pros and cons because your boss knows the agency, they know the rules, but also too, like it’s your boss and you may not feel comfortable being completely honest with your boss about how you’re feeling about your job, right?

So, another con might be that it could usually focus on administrative needs versus clinical needs, or at least trying to balance both, which might be tricky and it takes up a lot of time and you may not get the allotted time that you really need to focus on your clinical skills.

Another con may be that you might need a secondary clinical supervisor to really navigate the complexity of the clinical supervisor being your boss.

And lastly, usually, cannot access the agency clinical supervisor, if you’re providing services outside of the agency, like in a private practice.

So, I want to share just a quick story about this. Som I was working with a social worker as their coach, and they wanted me as a coach one because I wasn’t able to do supervision at the time, and they really just needed a space to process what the heck was going on.

So, this person was at an agency and their boss was doing all sorts of microaggressions and getting down on them. They were just kind of being a jerk. And this person is supposed to be coming to them for clinical supervision and they felt scared. They felt intimidated. Their self-confidence was taking a beating at the hands of this boss. And it was really starting to impact not just the work that they’re doing, but the way that they develop their skills, their self-confidence, and even questioning whether they should leave the field or not. So, that just kind of highlights one thing that can happen if you have your clinical supervisor as your boss.

Kayla: Another consideration too, is this goes back to the administrative needs versus clinical needs. And as someone who actually ran non-for-profit organizations before going into private practice, I can definitely tell you that a lot of managers and high-level executives, and it doesn’t even matter if you’re even the executive director of an agency, usually there are people above you, right? Like, board of directors and people like that.

So as a result, administrative needs are often prioritized over clinical needs, unfortunately, in a lot of settings. So, you as a supervisee may be really wanting support with a clinical need of a patient or multiple patients, but if the clinical supervisor’s main role is focusing on the administrative needs. They might actually conflict with each other and not necessarily help you as a supervisee looking to get that support for that client.

Catherine: What would be an example of where that might happen?

Kayla: Yeah, so let’s just say that there is funding issues. So maybe you need to meet a specific number of clients in a day, or in a week, or even in a month for that matter. And as a result, there’s one or two clients who may be taking up more time than other clients. As a result, there might be administrative pressures on the clinical supervisor of the agency to quickly serve multiple clients. And as a result, it might be getting people in and out of an agency Instead of actually addressing why they’re there.

Catherine: Now we’re looking at ethical dilemmas. Oh yikes.

Kayla: Not saying that this happens for everyone, but these are definitely some of the cons that might show up if your clinical supervisor is within the agency that you work.

Catherine: Yes. Yes. All right. Let’s hop into number five. So, the other places sometimes people will get clinical supervision is through the directories from regulatory bodies. So, meaning large organizations such as the state and NASW, right? So sometimes, not all the time, the states have directories for clinical supervisors on them. Which is good, right, because you’re able to look at the whole list that the state has for people who are qualified, whatever that looks like in the state, to provide clinical supervision, meaning that they have met the requirements and their licenses are in good standing.

So, there are cons to this. So first of all, not every regulatory body even has a directory. So that can be a challenge if your regulatory body doesn’t maintain a directory. And even if they do, sometimes these directories aren’t user friendly, meaning they’re not SEO optimized when you’re trying to find a specific clinical supervisor it may not give you all the data or all the information that you need to make sure that this clinical supervisor fits what you need as a practitioner.

Also, these listening’s aren’t always up to date because, of course, regulatory bodies, their main role is protecting the public. And although clinical supervision is a part of protecting the public, it usually isn’t a priority over, like, other responsibilities that the regulatory body has. So, these are some of the challenges of focusing on a regulatory body’s clinical supervision directory.

Catherine: Yes, and the other thing that I noticed when I was doing my research is that if a state has this available, it’s just the names. And some states don’t even give you their contact information. Because of privacy, right? So, I’m thinking, okay, so I have this list of names, but I have no way of getting in contact with them. And in the reasoning for this, that this particular state said is so that you can verify that the person you’re about to hire is actually approved, but that doesn’t really help because there’s no way that I can get in contact with any of these people to see if they’re able to provide me supervision services. As a new associate, a new intern, you don’t have access to all of these networks and professionals to be able to find these people. So, it’s hard. I don’t know.

Kayla, you want to go into Google searches? You’re so good at Google and SEO.

Kayla: Yeah, and you know, usually I would say Google searches are like the best thing you can possibly do. And they are quick and easy. And let’s be honest, we all have access to internet today, we could just go on Google, type in clinical supervisor, and we would hope that something would pop up.

The only issue with that is many therapists don’t SEO optimize their website for clinical supervision services. For instance, most clinical supervisors are only doing clinical supervision kind of on the side, like they have so many spaces, but they’re still focusing on clinical practice as their main source of income, whether through private practice or in an organization or so forth. So, as you’re looking for a clinical supervisor, if they don’t SEO optimize their page for clinical supervision, you can have a very difficult time trying to find a clinical supervisor.

And I actually have a personal experience myself. When I first went into private practice, I thought I needed a clinical supervisor, which I did. But my first thing was that I just needed a clinical supervisor. I needed to tick that box and have a clinical supervisor. As a result, I did Google searches. I had a really difficult time trying to find a clinical supervisor, because again, nobody has SEO optimized websites for clinical supervision.

I found a clinical supervisor and honestly, she is an amazing clinical supervisor. However, it wasn’t the right fit. We didn’t work with the same clientele. We didn’t come from the same theoretical orientation. However, she was the only clinical supervisor I could find.

What happened to me was that I actually felt like I wanted to leave social work. Because I was like, I don’t know anything that she’s talking about. I don’t know the therapeutic modality. Like, everything was just going above my head, and as a result, I just felt like I was a terrible social worker.

However, fortunately, this clinical supervisor said, I think that we are not the right fit. So, I went back, found another clinical supervisor. Fortunately, it came from a network, from a colleague of mine, who ended up being an amazing clinical supervisor, and all of those fears, all those worries went away because we work from the same theoretical orientation and we work with the same clients.

But going back to Google searches is that when it’s hard to find a clinical supervisor, even if one pops up, it might not be the right fit for you.

Catherine: Yes, that’s so true. And a lot of times people don’t even know what to look for. They just want to check the box. And I see this All the time.

And our number three number three ways to find a clinical supervisor is people will go to social media. And reach out in groups and say, hey, I’m looking for a clinical supervisor, but they don’t specify where they’re located at. They don’t specify what their job is, what their role is. They don’t specify what the goals are, what the populations are, what the therapeutic modalities are. No shame. It’s just they don’t know. And there’s all of these different topics to take into account when hiring a clinical supervisor. It’s so important for your growth.

So, while number three is social media groups, the pros are that. There’s a lot of them out there. They have hundreds and thousands of therapists in them who can provide referrals or I’ve seen plenty of people say, Hey, I’m available. I’m willing to talk to you. I’m willing to work something out with you.

There are, of course, cons with this too, right? Because sometimes if you go into the groups, sometimes your posts are never seen. If somebody doesn’t happen to comment on them, then the algorithm is not going to prioritize it, they’re not going to show it to more people. If there’s a therapist specific group, they may be coming from across the country. So, if you don’t know to specify, hey, I’m in this state. Then you can have people from all over saying, hey, like, look at me, hire me. So, it may be really hard to be able to find people who are qualified and who are a really good fit for you.

Kayla: And I also want to jump into just going back to the algorithms of social media. They’re always changing for once. So, I can’t give you a specific formula. But I can tell you that I run my own Facebook group that has almost 7,000 people in it. And even when I make posts, I can actually see how many people had seen the post. And usually, out of 7,000 people, I’m lucky to get 1,000 people see it. And that’s someone who’s running the group, that is someone who’s really prioritizing likes and comments and all of these types of things, because that’s important for the algorithm too. So, if only one seventh. And that’s on a good day. There’s been posts I’ve had that only seen a hundred people.

Catherine: Oof.

Kayla: So even though you think that, wow, this group has 7,000 people, if it’s not fitting the algorithm’s requirements, it may never be seen.

Catherine: Yeah, and there’s some missed opportunities there. If you’re trying to find somebody who’s the perfect fit, but that perfect fit just doesn’t see it, it can be really hard.

Kayla: 100%. So, number two is networks and word of mouth. Now the pro is you can actually hear other therapists’ opinions and experiences with specific clinical supervisors so that you have an idea before you even reach out to them what the clinical supervisor is like. Like I said, that’s how I eventually found my clinical supervisor who, again changed my whole perception on clinical supervision, and I’m still so fortunate that I had found her.

However, the con is just because a colleague found a particular clinical supervisor to be good, going back to what we mentioned before, it doesn’t mean that this particular clinical supervisor has the same theoretical orientation as you, or practices from the same approaches as you, or even works with the same clients as you. So, they might have been a great fit for your colleague, but not necessarily a great fit for you.

Catherine: Yes, yes. And that is actually how a lot of people that I’ve known is to find their clinical supervisor, which is why we ranked it as number two, because it’s a pretty good, you know, pretty good way. And I feel like it is a good way to be able to trust the referral.

So, some of my referrals have come from previous professors that I had in college. And I reached out to them and said, hey, I’m providing these services. If you know anybody, because professors are the ones who. They have access to all the social work students who are going to be graduating and who are looking for clinical supervisors. So that could be a good place to start.

But again, the professor doesn’t really know, know me like they know I took their class and I’m nice enough, but they may not have information as to all of my specialties and everything and the theoretical orientation and even a personality fit, right? Personality fit, schedule fit. So, there is definitely some cons to that one as well.

So, we have just to kind of recap, we’ve gone through a lot of different ways to find a clinical supervisor, but definitely the number one way to find a clinical supervisor is going to be on the clinical supervision specific directories, such as the Canadian Clinical Supervision Therapist Directory for the Canadian listeners here, and the RISE Directory for our United States listeners here.

So, there’s a lot of pros to accessing these directories for your clinical supervisor, right? One, it was developed by therapists for therapists. So, we get it. We know what you’re looking for. We know what you’re searching for. We know all of the different areas that you need to know to successfully work with a clinical supervisor that’s going to be helpful for you, right?

These directories have been really developed with the best fit in mind, right? So, you can look at the theoretical orientation, if they do individual sessions, group sessions, if they’re accepting new supervisees. So, all of these different ways to be able to find the good fit, right? You can easily access their contact information, including their website. I know for the Rise directory, you can access their social media profiles, so you’re able to get a really good view around their personality and essentially, you know how they’re marketing themselves and what they want to be known as and what they feel like they’re best at.

So, because there are very few clinical supervisor directories outside of these directories, our SEO is pretty good. And in saying that, at least for the Canadian Clinical Supervision, it’s a newer site, so they are working on implementing their SEO, meaning that they’re going to be more easily discovered if you do a Google search and Kayla, this is your jam.

You like, if anyone has questions about SEO and Google, I just refer them to you. Do you want to go more into that as far as what that means and how that helps associates and looking for supervision?

Kayla: Yes, I absolutely love that. And one of the things that we really want to focus on, specifically through the Canadian Clinical Supervision Therapist Directory, is SEO. You need to be able, whether you’re a clinical supervisor or whether you’re a therapist, you need to find that person. You need to find that site. So as a result, we’ve been working so actively and aggressively at implementing our SEO plan so that we are now ranking, number one, at least here in Canada. It also is jurisdiction specific, but here in Canada, we’re ranking on the first page of Google for most key words related to clinical supervision.

So again, if you’re a clinical supervisor looking to advertise on our site, therapists are going to be able to easily find you when they do do that Google search that we talked about earlier when it didn’t exist when I was looking. And I wish it did because if it did, I probably would have been able to find a good clinical supervisor fit quicker.

But SEO is important and the Canadian clinical supervision directory we are ranking high because at this point in time, there really is no competitors.

Catherine: Yes. And that’s awesome. To be fair, we do want to make sure that you are aware of the cons is that you will have different profiles that you will need to search through to find the right fit. You might need to reach out to different people.

And also, a con that I found is that some clinical supervisors don’t know that these directories exist. So, while Kayla and I are building up the awareness piece to say, hey, clinical supervisors, like this is a resource. This now exists for you. There could be some limitations because we just don’t know what’s out there, but every day we are growing and every day we are getting new supervisors on there.

So, Kayla, do you have anything to add to that?

Kayla: I think that’s really important to highlight that as we’re continuing to build up the directory, just like any directory, not every clinical supervisor is going to be on any of these directories. Because of course, they have to pay to be on them.

So, similar to any other therapist directory that most therapists are on trying to find clients, clinical supervisors directories to also find clinical supervisees. But not every clinical supervisor is aware that these clinical supervisory directories exist.

And also, not every clinical supervisor right now is even accepting clients, so going back to some of these profiles that might be on our directories is ideally, we would hope that the clinical supervisors will update when their spaces are full, but it’s possible that they’re not.

They are not. So, it’s possible that you may reach out to a clinical supervisor and they may say unfortunately, we don’t have any space right now. But going back to the pros, is that there’s so many options on our directories that you will find the right fit.

Catherine: Yeah. And what I found too is that because they’re paying to be on this directory and it’s not just some list they submitted their name to one time, they’re pretty good about saying, Oh, I am no longer accepting people at this time. So let me pause my account. So, what I found with the Rise directory is if people are no longer accepting it, they will not be on there. So there’s a good chance that the people that are on there are currently open. But it will take some messaging.

Kayla: A hundred percent. So, let’s recap.

So, number six is having a clinical supervisor at your place of employment.

Number five, finding a clinical supervisor through regulatory bodies, clinical supervisor directories if they exist.

Fourth. is doing a simple Google search and seeing if you can find some websites or Google business pages or something that can bring you in the right direction.

Number three, social media groups.

Number two, networks or word of mouth referrals.

And then number one, clinical supervision specific directories.

Now we did talk about our clinical supervision directories, so we want to make sure that you know how to reach out to them and how to check them out or sign up if you’re a clinical supervisor.

So, for Canadian listeners, check out the Canadian Clinical Supervision Therapist Directory at canadianclinicalsupervision.ca.

For American listeners, check out the Rise directory at risedirectory.com

Or you can simply scroll down to the show notes and click on the links.

Catherine: Yeah. So, thank you so much, Kayla. This has been a really great conversation.

Listener, I hope that you have some more clarity and direction around how to find a clinical supervisor and also just some more insights around what does a good clinical supervisor fit? What does that even look like for you? So, we covered a lot of really great things in this episode.

If you benefited from this episode. Please share the knowledge. We are not about gatekeeping of information around here. So go ahead and share this on Instagram. Share this with a friend. You can open up your podcast app and text it over to somebody right now who maybe you know a colleague or somebody who is also looking for a clinical supervisor. And this just gives them a really great way to get started. Ways for to get ideas on where to go.

It was great talking with you, Kayla. I am so glad that we were able to make this work and I think that’s it.

Kayla: And thank you, for listening to our podcast episode today.

Again, whether you’re listening to this podcast on the Designer Practice Podcast or Social Workers Rise, we are so glad that you’re here.

And also, regardless of which podcast you’re listening to, check out the other podcast. Because if you have not heard of the other podcast, it has so much great information for you and to help you with your practice.

Catherine: Definitely. We’ll talk soon. Bye.

Kayla: Bye for now.

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