The impact of clinical supervision on counsellors and therapists, their practice and their clients. A systematic review of the literature

Abstract

In 2005 the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy (BACP) commissioned a systematic review of the research evidence related to the impact of supervision on counsellors and psychotherapists, their practice and their clients. This paper reports on some of the findings of this review, specifically from articles published in this area since 1980. Detailed inclusion and exclusion criteria were agreed. EPPI-Reviewer software was used to organise and analyse the articles that met the inclusion criteria. This article reviews 18 individual published studies. The quality of evidence is variable, but supervision is consistently demonstrated to have some positive impacts on the supervisee.

Keywords:

• Supervision
• supervisee
• counselling
• psychotherapy
• systematic review

Thanks to Sophia Balamoutsou and Maggie Thomas (University of Leicester) for help with the data-extraction process. Also thanks to Jeff Brunton (Institute of Education, University of London) for ongoing support with using the EPPI-Reviewer software and Pete Bower (University of Manchester) for ongoing advice and support.