Supervisor s Report

In the autumn of 1992 I was asked - by the Brent Bereavement Project as it was then called whether I would be willing to supervise a group of volunteers due to the illness of their supervisor. Having agreed I drove to Wembley to a church hall where the meeting was to take place. Nobody arrived to be supervised and I found it very eerie sitting in an isolated hall surrounded by big trees! When, at a later date I agreed to become a regular supervisor (having discovered that the rooms available to the Project were in heavy demand) the groups began to meet in my home. This proved to be much more satisfactory and I was soon seeing four groups of bereavement volunteers each for 2 hours once a month. The average number in each group was six and the agreement was that if a member was unable to attend they would ring me and we could discuss their work over the phone. Generally speaking this worked well, although there were one or two volunteers who 'forgot'.

The group members were a mix of 'visitors' (that is, having no professional training), trainee counsellors undergoing a diploma or degree course, and one or two who had already completed their training. I found this mix both interesting and stimulating and aimed to enable all to take part in the session feeling that they had a valuable contribution to make whatever their experience. I believed that group members could learn from each other and this proved to be the case - an insightful comment from an 'untrained" counsellor was usually very helpful. It was important to find a common language, but at the same time to allow those in training to use the terms they were learning on their course whether it was analytically orientated, person centred, humanistic etc.

The groups met for two hours and members were able to take turns in presenting their work. I encouraged everyone to take part in the discussion that followed and acted as both supervisor and timekeeper to ensure that everyone was able to make a presentation. I felt it was important that everyone should learn to trust each other so that they could reveal the content of their work with a client without fear of criticism.

I found it interesting to speculate why some groups 'held together" with regular attendance at the monthly meetings and being very supportive with each other, whilst other groups were less reliable. I believe that for a group to function well it needs to feel 'safe', so that place, time and regularity create boundaries within which members felt 'held". Hence, any changes in membership affected the dynamics and sometimes led to members becoming less reliable. Some groups become 'closed" so new members joining had to be helped to belong.

I was always very impressed with the commitment of the volunteers, their willingness to learn and the standard of work they carried out; their friendliness and concern for me and for each other and it was a sad day when, having become an octogenarian I decided to retire.

 

 

WINIFRED ROBERTS