The definition of Supportive Supervision:
A safe, supportive, confidential and collaborative relationship between a supervisor and supervisee, and/or supervisees where supervisees can voice their difficulties, discuss challenges and be recognised for their successes, receive constructive feedback and emotional support, and build their technical skills and capacity, and enhance quality of service provision.

Supervision is for everyone

Supervision at all levels of MHPSS provision is strongly recommended, including for multi-disciplinary teams who are integrating aspects of MHPSS within their work. Even professionals who are highly technically skilled can benefit from the opportunity for continuous reflection and development that comes from supervision. Supervision should ideally be made available to all and encouraged at the organisational level.

Supportive supervision is a crosscutting set of principles that can be applied to various types of supervision used in MHPSS work across sectors, such as clinical and technical approaches.

Supervision is:

A safe, supportive, confidential and collaborative space
A place where supervisees can openly discuss both difficulties and successes in their role
A place where supervisees receive clear and constructive feedback that helps them to build their technical capacity
A place where supervisees receive emotional support Supervisee
A respectful, collaborative space that enables joint problem solving and supports independent learning
A place for mutual learning for supervisee(s) and supervisor
A place to identify and respectfully challenge bias or prejudice
An appropriately boundaried space, including awareness for both the supervisor and supervisee of limits to confidentiality (e.g. in cases of child protection concerns or other risk of harm to self or others)

The Apprenticeship Model

Supervision should be considered as a vital component of effective training. The ‘apprenticeship model’ is a framework for providing intensive post-training supervisory support, enabling supervisees to consolidate knowledge and skills gained during training.

Different types of supervision: Supervision can be delivered in several different ways either in person or remotely.

This IMS works with the following:

individual supervision
group supervision
peer supervision
live supervision

The IMS research suggests that individual, face-to-face supervision is the preferred format for MHPSS practitioners. However, resource constraints, access difficulties and insecurity can sometimes make this difficult to achieve in practice. Remote methods of delivery seem likely to become increasingly necessary. For example, factors such as travel restrictions or security threats may necessitate greater reliance on digital platforms for supervision.

The Apprenticeship Model

About the IMS

Who is the IMS for?

Key principles

IMS Team

Supervision is for everyone

Supervision is:

The Apprenticeship Model