387: Choosing a Counselling Supervisor: What Changes in 2026

A very warm welcome to episode 387 of the Counselling Tutor podcast with Rory Lees-Oakes and Ken Kelly.

Rory and I are taking you on a journey with three stops today, starting with ethical sustainable practice, where today we're speaking about supervision, the competencies and the 2026 BACP ethical framework.

What do we need to know? what's changed or is changing, if anything.

We're then going to practice matters.

Rory's already introduced Joseph Harney, speaking about love in the therapy room.

So that's definitely something to stick around for.

And then students.

Today in student services, we're looking at literature.

Literature.

There you go.

Literature.

literature thank you very much literature reviews that that word's not coming out easy today literature reviews making sense of counseling research so that's our episode 387 starting off ethical sustainable practice rory has anything changed around supervision in the about to be updated in real time on the 3rd of november bacp ethical framework and supervision guide

yeah yeah i think it i think this is a very very um interesting topic and i also think it's one that just might slide under the radar as people look through the the new revised ethical framework as ken said on the 3rd of november 2026 at midday that's what the bacp say there'll be a new framework that um the bacp and those who are members will be working too and under core responsibility 4.3 The framework asks to have adequate supervision that enables us to reflect in depth about all aspects of our practice.

Now, that is no different than the ethical framework I studied in 2012.

When I graduated, it was the 2012 framework.

However, what has changed is the BACP states that practitioners must ensure they have confirmed their supervisor has the necessary qualifications, experience, and competence to supervise their work in accordance with the BACP supervision framework.

Now, in the 2018 ethical framework, if my memory serves, Ken, It was really just have adequate supervision that enables us to reflect in depth about all aspects of our practice.

This is now basically saying that your supervisor doesn't say anything outright they need to be a qualified supervisor but reading between the words the words necessary qualifications which would indicate that someone needs to be at least qualified in supervision have experience in other words you know be a journey therapist someone who's who's got a few hours a few hundred hours under the belt and competence in other words somebody who's qualified and competent in other words what they're really saying i think is that they want someone who's a therapist to supervise therapists it doesn't always happen i have to say um to supervise and also that they need to be within the BACP supervision competence framework.

And I'll just take a little pause there and say that I think it was about, I want to say about five years ago, the BACP developed a supervision competence framework.

um so that anybody who trains as a supervisor would be taught within that framework and that would give them the competence to be a supervisor so it's it's a real step change um it's massive it's a massive step change and interestingly enough um and unusually i have to say to be fair to the bacp it's prescriptive it's not a it's not a would be nice if it really is core responsibility yeah it doesn't get any more yeah you have to have it

I love this.

I really do.

And I mean, we are no strangers to the supervision competence framework because we built a supervisor training course where we map to that framework.

And of course, we also map to the BACP's curriculum on what a supervisor should learn, study, and what competences they should hold.

And The thing that was surprising to me when we started looking at that documentation and building that course, Rory, is that, I'm gonna go back to when I was a student.