Supervision Records & Agreements

If you are supervising the psychometrist, then a supervisory agreement is necessary. In institutional settings, such as school boards, hospitals, and correctional facilities, if your employment contract and the supervisee’s employment contract both address the required terms of supervision referred to in the Standards, this would be considered to constitute a supervision agreement.

Many of the elements of a supervision agreement listed within the Standards apply broadly to any situation in which supervisors take responsibility for the work done by their supervisees. Some elements of Standard 4.1.1 (5) which may be applicable to the supervision of research and other non-clinical activities include:

a) the date upon which the agreement is effective and the expected date upon which it will expire;
b) the specific duties and obligations of the supervisee;
c) any limitations imposed upon the activities of the supervisee;
d) the specific duties and obligations of the supervisor;
e) the expected frequency and length of supervision meetings;
g) contact information and emergency contact information for both the supervisor and supervisee;
h) confirmation that the supervisee will comply with all requirements under the legislation and regulations relevant to the service and the Standards of Professional Conduct (2017); and
i) identification of a plan for appropriate support for the supervisee in the event of the supervisor’s unavailability.

In institutional settings, such as Universities and hospitals, employment contracts that address the terms of supervision referred to in these Standards may be considered to constitute a supervision agreement.

Many of the elements of supervision records listed within the Standards apply only to the care of clients. Some, however, apply more broadly to any situation in which supervisors take responsibility for the work done by their supervisees. Some elements of Standard 4.1.1 (3) which may be applicable to the supervision of research and other non-clinical activities include:

a)    the date and length of time of each supervision meeting;
d)    a summary of discussions regarding any relevant ethical, professional and jurisprudence issues discussed at each supervision meeting;
e)    a notation of any directives provided to the supervisee at each supervision meeting; and
f)     a notation of any of the supervisee’s strengths and needs for further development identified at each supervision meeting;

A supervisor would be expected to make a record of any relevant ethical, professional, and jurisprudence issues discussed, directives provided, and strengths and needs for development identified during a supervision meeting. If few or none of these things were discussed at a particular meeting, then only a very brief notation including only the date and length of the meeting would be required.

The Standard is intended to ensure that there is clear agreement between the supervisor and supervisee with respect to all of the minimum elements listed in the Standards. It may be onerous to individuals make agreements that are redundant. So long as it can be demonstrated that each individual supervisor and supervisee has agreed to all of the following elements, whether directly or through a third party, you could consider that there is an agreement which meets the Standards:

a) the date upon which the agreement is effective and the expected date upon which it will expire;
b) the specific duties and obligations of the supervisee;
c) any limitations imposed upon the activities of the supervisee;
d) the specific duties and obligations of the supervisor;
e) the expected frequency and length of supervision meetings;
f) the manner in which the supervisor will be directly involved in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of the services provided to clients;
g) contact information and emergency contact information for both the supervisor and supervisee;
h) confirmation that the supervisee will comply with all requirements under the legislation and regulations relevant to the service and the Standards of Professional Conduct (2017); and
i)  identification of a plan for appropriate support for the supervisee in the event of the supervisor’s unavailability.

To the extent that any of the minimum elements of an agreement listed above are not addressed, an additional agreement covering the missing elements would be required.

Because of the diversity of supervision and consultation arrangements members are involved in, the College could not possibly provide examples or templates of agreements that would cover every situation.

We encourage you to design agreements that make sense for your own particular practice that contain at least the minimum information specified in the Standards.  You are also free to add any additional elements you consider important in an agreement and may use any kind of language you wish to use.

If it would help to see how some similar agreements are structured, here is a link to a few sample supervision contracts online: https://www.cfalender.com/supervision-contracts.html. These may or not be relevant or appropriate for all kinds of relationships but may provide a sense of what others’ agreements look like.

When a client makes a request for his or her record, or authorizes release of it to another person, subject to the specific exceptions in privacy legislation, you must comply with the request. All information about a client that is relevant to the services provided should, however, be contained within the client record. There should be no information relevant to client care in a supervision record that would not also be found in the client’s own file.

A supervision record should contain only information relevant to the member’s supervision of the supervisee’s performance, developmental goals, progress, and challenges. It should only include incidental reference to clients to relate the narrative to specific cases.

If for any reason, you are compelled to provide a supervision record because it contains information related to a client, it would be important to ensure that information about other clients recorded in the supervision record is not disclosed without their consent or unless you are legally compelled to release it. Similarly, you should not release personal information about the supervisee without the supervisee’s consent, unless you are legally compelled to release it.

If faced with a request which leads you to believe that supervision records are specifically being sought, you may indicate that the supervision records pertain to the supervisee’s own developmental goals, training, and growth, that all client-related information is incidental to these issues, and that all client-related information is contained in the client file. Again, unless required by a court of law, you must not release supervision records unless both the supervisee and client specifically authorize you to do so.

The clients receiving services directly from your supervisee are considered to be your clients. As such, the client file is actually yours even while in the possession of a supervisee under your direction; this is the case with respect to files of clients seen by members of the College with Certificates of Registration Authorizing Supervised Practice as well as non-members of the College. You may decide that, rather than keeping client files in your possession while services are being provided, your supervision would extend to ensuring that the supervisee maintains the files in a secure, confidential and accessible manner, in accordance with the Standards and the applicable legislation.  When the supervision period ends, the record of services which you had always been responsible for  remain your responsibility. Given that you will not have authority over the conduct of the former supervisee, you must personally ensure that the records remain secure, confidential and accessible in the manner required by the Standards.

The Standards do not specifically prescribe what you must do with supervision files when you leave an organization in which you are providing supervision.  In most cases, supervision of services to the clients of the organization would be considered an activity of the organization which is performed by the supervisor. If this is the case, the file likely belongs to the organization and it would make sense for the file to be left in the organization’s care and dealt with in accordance with the privacy legislation applicable to the organization. It is important to make the best efforts in these situations to ensure that the organization will retain the files for at least two years, as this is the prescribed retention period for supervision files when they belong to individual members who are not carrying out supervision in an organizational context. To use the analogy of a human resources file, if you would leave a human resources record with the organization in which you managed staff, then it’s likely that you would be expected to leave the record of supervision with the organization within which the supervision was provided. With respect to any information about an identifiable client in the files, the organization would, in most cases, be considered the Health Information Custodian and would be responsible for ensuring that the requirements of the Personal Health Information Protection Act are met.