Professional Supervision

Keeping interpreters well, in a stressful and emotionally draining job

What is Supervision?

Professional supervision is a process to enable and guide a practitioner towards competent and accountable practice. It also provides ongoing professional development and support.

As Professional Supervisors it is our responsibility to engage the supervisee within the relationship to guide them through and explore with them why they are making the decisions they make within their professional everyday life.  These decisions can be positive as well as negative, but all the decisions we make will have a basis to them.  Sometimes we are aware of them and sometimes we are not.

Many of the professionals we work alongside of everyday have professional supervision, but as Sign Language Interpreters, we don't.  This is odd and many of the other professions would be surprised to learn that we do not have supervision as a compulsory element to our work, like them.
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Many people are unsure about the difference between mentoring and Supervision.  Mentoring would tend to be for a fixed period of time and would focus on practical elements of a persons interpreting, such as placement, fingerspelling, time lag etc. It would be usual practice for the mentor to shadow and watch the mentee during the relationship.

​ Supervision however, is on an ongoing basis and tends to look more at the decisions made along with the inter and intra personal relationships and dilemmas that can occur when interpreting, rather than the practical skills of interpreting.
Do you ever leave a job and wonder if you could have made a different decision?  Do you ever end up emotionally taking work home with you and wonder why you are getting short tempered at home with your family?  Ever wish you had a confidential space in which you could talk through bookings that you have so that you could unpack them?

​Then supervision is for you!