The Empowerment Model of Clinical Supervision and It’s Application to Financial Therapy Supervision

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Financial Therapy creates a beautiful bridge between mental health and money. It leans in to complex emotions with clients and supports their healing journey with finances. When exploring the psychology of money, there’s a lot of rich material to unpack. Therefore it’s understandable that we, as a profession, are starting to explore how supervision within Financial Therapists can support the integrity and ethics of the profession, as well as the growth of Financial Therapists called to do this meaningful work.

What characteristics make a phenomenal supervisor? What about a not-so-great one? As an Approved Clinical Supervisor (ACS) since 2014, it has been an amazing few years of holding space for the community’s stories of mental health and clinical supervision, including the need for something different, something modern, and something more. For many mental health professionals, we’ve had a challenging experience of feeling unsupported or unheard by a clinical supervisor. It’s an experience that feels ever more significant when we recognize that supervisors shape us as new clinicians in the field.

A Modern Approach to Supervision

Christina Murphy and I co-founded Supervsionary, LLC, a business focused on trainings and tools for providing quality clinical supervision. Christina and I both recognize our responsibility to the next generation of clinicians through our roles as mental health leaders and clinical supervisors. In response to our own work with supervisees, The Empowerment Model of Clinical Supervision was defined in 2018 and launched as a book in 2019, thus introducing The Empowerment Model of Clinical Supervision to the greater mental health community.

What is The Empowerment Model?

What does it take to show up as an effective supervisor that can empower and support others? A brief exploration of redefined roles within the supervisor and supervisee relationship is a valuable place to start. The Empowerment Model names and defines roles of:

·       Self

·       Leader

·       Researcher

·       Teacher

·       Consultant

·       Colleague

An important aspect to notice is the absence of the counselor role from previous models. It is intentionally omitted for several reasons, including efforts to respect boundaries and avoid dual roles within the supervisory relationship.

How is this Model Different?

Beyond The Empowerment Model reflecting modern roles within a fluid model as opposed to a traditional stair-step model, our initial research findings also indicated that supervisees who were engaged in The Empowerment Model by their supervisors showed statistically significant improvement in categories of General Supervision, The Administrative Counseling Process, The Clinical Counseling Process, and The Conceptualization Process compared to the control group.

How Does it Apply to Financial Therapy?

The Empowerment Model has a foundation forged in empowered leadership, which can apply to all sort of disciplines, including Financial Therapy. As a profession, encouraging Financial Therapists to do their own work around money is essential, and could require cultivation of a similar safe space to client work—one of zero judgement and abundant compassion. We surmise this can be done through the same principles of empowerment and the roles of leader, teacher, researcher, consultant, and colleague.

With this in mind, we’ve adapted our popular Supervision Evaluation to reflect competencies of Financial Therapy for ongoing exploration and growth within the supervision process. These competencies include:

1.    Provides psychoeducation of money healing and money strategies as appropriate.

2.    Engages client in psychology of money work from emotional, relational, behavioral, and cognitive lenses.

3.    Incorporates therapeutic and somatic coping skills into money work as appropriate.

4.    Engages client with empathy, curiosity, and compassion.

5.    Identifies client money beliefs and money scripts for deeper processing.

6.    Remains aware of personal biases and beliefs around money and engages in own financial work as appropriate.

7.    Screens for indicators of financial manipulation including financial enabling, financial control, and financial abuse.

8.    Explores client financial flashpoints and financial traumas as appropriate.

9.    Supports therapeutic goal-setting in alignment with client values.

10. Demonstrates a clear understanding of client’s financial circumstances.

11. Follows a fiduciary standard of care regarding Financial Needs Analysis, Financial Advice, and client advocacy.

12. Embodies the scope of the relationship between professional and client and has disclosed this scope to the client.

Where Do I Learn More?

The Financial Therapy Supervision Evaluation is now available on our website! If you are curious about The Empowerment Model and it’s possible application to your own work as a supervisor, leader, or Financial Therapist, you’re in luck! We have several options for how you can take a deeper dive into The Empowerment Model and it’s fit for you.

You can:

1)    Purchase the 2nd edition book at Amazon.com

2)    Select our self-paced trainings for continued professional development at https://supervisionaryllc.thinkific.com/

3)    Explore free templates and downloads at our website https://www.empowermentmodelsupervision.com/

4)    Watch various role plays of clinical supervision topics on our YouTube channel https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfKd6CHS_9fxIgW3Mi-CZXA

We are excited to contribute our model and ideas to developing quality Financial Therapy Supervision and can’t wait to hear how the supervision materials provided have enhanced your work within this growing field!