How much supervision should I have?
| Membership category | Amount of supervision | Recommended resources | Mandatory or recommended |
| Accredited members | Minimum of 1.5 hours per calendar month regardless of number of contracted clients. Can be a mix of one to one, peer, telephone and online, as all these count for accreditation. |
Good Practice in Action supervision resources - see below |
Mandatory for accredited members if you're currently practising with contracted clients. If you're managing a full case load, you may need to increase these hours as you see necessary. You can take a break from supervision if you're not seeing any clients in a calendar month. This should be documented for accreditation purposes. |
| Student membership for trainees | Minimum of 1.5 hours per calendar month. Ratio of 8 hours counselling to 1 hour supervision, with supervision every two weeks. Can be a mix of one to one or group. A facilitator is needed for group supervision. Peer supervision is not acceptable for students. |
Good Practice in Action supervision resources - see below Especially GPiA054 Introduction to supervision for members |
Usually mandatory for accredited courses. It may also be mandatory depending on your career choices and future accreditation, if you're planning to use hours towards accreditation. If you need to check your own course criteria, refer to your course tutors or training organisations. |
| Other categories | Minimum of 1.5 hours per calendar month. Members only using counselling skills should have appropriate supervision adequate to their needs (see the Ethical Framework) |
Good Practice in Action supervision resources - see below Ethical Framework for the Counselling Professions BACP Register guide to supervision |
1.5 hours or adequate supervision for your needs is recommended if you're seeing contracted clients. If you have a full case load, you may need to increase these hours as you see necessary. If you're working towards accreditation, 1.5 hours is required. |
Notes:
- Hours need to be per calendar month and not four or five weekly. If you have clients from 4 June to 18 July this is not a calendar month; you need supervision for the June clients and for the July clients. This can be any date in the month as long as you have it in place and it is contracted.
- For peer or group supervision: A group of up to four can claim 50% of the time together. For groups of five or more the time needs to be divided equally.
- Some text-based supervision (synchronous and asynchronous) may be useful if you're delivering text-based therapy. However, this won’t count towards your monthly supervision time and should be in addition to the arrangements you have for individual or group supervision that is face-to-face, online or video, or over the phone.
Good Practice in Action resources on supervision
Clinical reflections for practice
Ethical mindfulness in supervision and training GPiA 084
Commonly asked questions
How to choose a supervisor (counsellors) GPiA 008
Introduction to supervision (members) GPiA 054
Introduction to supervision (public) GPiA 064
Monitoring the supervisory relationship from the perspective of the supervisee GPiA 011
Fact sheets
How to choose a supervisor for your service GPiA 009
Monitoring the supervisory relationship from the supervisor's perspective GPiA 010
Peer supervision within the counselling professions GPiA 121
Legal resources
Supervision in England, Northern Ireland and Wales GPiA 032
