CAPA's Supervision Problems

HypnosisAustralia, November 2007

By Dr Tracie O'Keefe DCH, Clinical Hypnotherapist, Psychotherapist & Counsellor
Editorial Director of HypnosisAustralia Online.

The Counseling and Psychotherapy Association (CAPA, NSW) is the largest organisation in The Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia (PACFA). In signing up as a member organisation of PACFA it agreed to comply with PACFA's Guidelines for therapists on supervision which include 10 hours per year of continuing professional supervision, which had to be documented. CAPA, however, are currently demanding that their members and their supervision insist on signing a form that says the supervisor is monitoring the supervisee's client load. Many therapists who are in CAPA are also hypnotherapists.

It is generally accepted that a line supervisor cannot fulfill the role of a therapy supervisor because a dual role would exist and the supervision would not have objectivity. CAPA, however, is insisting that therapy supervisors state on record that they are monitoring the supervisee's case load in private practice. This would be an impossible task for a therapy supervisor to do and would not be within the scope of any such supervision criteria which literally only allows 10 separate one-hour supervisions per year. If supervisees and supervisors do not take part in this requirement, CAPA has refused to renew therapists' membership in 2007. PACFA guidelines specifically state that line supervisors cannot act as therapy supervisors.

These conflictions were pointed out to the CAPA membership secretary Joy Stewart who wrote to a practitioner saying that it was the law, but certainly no such law exists in NSW or any state. She also stated that such a form was required by CAPA's insurers but could not produce any evidence of that and no other CAPA member we spoke to had ever heard of such an insurance clause. In communicating with the President Jo Frasco of CAPA it became obvious that she too was supporting this practice, believing that somehow the form legitimised members more than would members simply providing a letter from their supervisors saying that supervision had taken place, which is common practice by other member organisations of PACFA, and is within the scope of PACFA guidelines.

We spoke to several of ex-members of CAPA who said they had left the organisation because of a history of committee members simply making up rules for rules' sake and not thoroughly discussing them with members. One ex-member said, "It got ridiculous in the end because there were people on committees who really did not have the understanding of the therapy world to appreciate the ramification of their actions on their members so I just did not bother renewing my membership."

Hypnotherapists who are members of CAPA who practise hypnosis as counsellors or simply as hypnotherapists who are also counsellors need to be very careful because if they are ever sued then they will have to produce those supervision records to their lawyers. It will become obvious that the therapy supervisors could not possibly have monitored the case loads and the supervisors themselves will run the danger of being a co-party in that lawsuit for negligence during supervision.

©HypnosisAustralia, November 2007