Interdisciplinary Supervision: Understanding the Historical Threads that Connect the Helping Professions

Description

This course does not offer CE Credits. The same course is available for purchase and offers 1.5 CE hours for behavioral health clinicians.  See "related products" below.

Clinical supervisors are often asked to support supervisees across counseling, social work, psychology, marriage and family therapy, and related behavioral health disciplines. Even when everyone is using the shared language of “clinical supervision,” each profession brings its own history, values, definitions of supervision, ethical expectations, scope of practice, and assumptions about how change occurs. When these differences remain unnamed, they can contribute to confusion, hierarchy, missed disclosures, strain in the supervisory relationship, and uncertainty about whether the supervision being provided truly fits the supervisee’s professional path.

For supervisors working across disciplines, the task is not to erase professional differences, but to understand them more clearly. This training helps supervisors recognize how disciplinary identity shapes case conceptualization, communication, ethical reasoning, referral decisions, and the supervisee’s developing sense of professional competence. The webinar also emphasizes the supervisor’s responsibility to understand the supervisee’s licensure track, scope of practice, ethical code, and requirements for training or licensure before assuming that cross-disciplinary supervision is appropriate.

Dr. DaLene Forester, PhD, LMFT, LPCC—an EMDRIA Approved Consultant/Trainer, Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and Consultant (CEDS-C), and AAMFT/CAMFT certified supervisor—brings direct experience working across professional identities and supervision contexts. As both a marriage and family therapist and licensed professional counselor, and as a supervisor and consultant, Dr. Forester is well positioned to help supervisors think through the practical and relational challenges that arise when professional training models, ethical frameworks, and supervision expectations do not fully align.

The training helps supervisors look beneath the surface of cross-disciplinary supervision by examining how professional histories continue to influence present-day expectations. Psychology, social work, counseling, and marriage and family therapy each developed with different emphases, including assessment, advocacy, wellness, relational systems, community context, client-centered growth, and evidence-informed practice. Rather than treating these differences as barriers, Dr. Forester shows how supervisors can use them to better understand how supervisees think, what they may prioritize, and where misunderstandings may emerge in clinical discussion.

Supervisors are guided to make disciplinary differences explicit through reflective conversation, clearer supervision agreements, and practical strategies that invite supervisees to bring forward their own professional lens. The course emphasizes curiosity, cultural humility, and attention to power dynamics as essential parts of a strong supervisory alliance, connecting these practices to supervisee disclosure, ethical risk, consultation, referral decisions, and client care. By understanding their own professional assumptions while learning the requirements, strengths, and limits of other disciplines, supervisors can create a supervision environment where differences are respected rather than flattened or ignored.

Key Takeaways

• Name the hidden professional lens: Understand how each helping profession’s history, values, and supervision definitions can shape expectations in cross-disciplinary supervision.
• Clarify scope, ethics, and licensure realities: Learn why supervisors need to understand supervisees’ professional requirements, ethical codes, and scope of practice before providing or structuring supervision.
• Use practical supervision tools: Apply reflective questions, checklist-based conversations, and lens-swap case discussions to make interdisciplinary differences visible and clinically useful.
• Strengthen disclosure and collaboration: Explore how cultural humility, power awareness, and respect for disciplinary identity can reduce supervisee nondisclosure and improve the supervisory alliance.

Why This Course?

• Relevant to real supervision settings: Many supervisors work with trainees, interns, associates, or clinicians whose professional background differs from their own, especially in agencies, community settings, universities, and interdisciplinary teams.
• Grounded in practical supervision concerns: The webinar addresses common issues such as differing case conceptualizations, hierarchy between professions, uncertainty about licensure requirements, and the risks of assuming that all supervision functions the same way.
• Focused on better client care: Stronger interdisciplinary understanding can help supervisors guide more appropriate consultation, referral, ethical decision-making, and collaboration across professional roles.
• Designed for reflective supervisors: Rather than offering a rigid formula, the course helps supervisors examine their own professional assumptions and build a more transparent, respectful, and effective supervision process.

Learning Objectives

• Discuss the historical origins and central commitments of counseling, social work, psychology, and marriage & family therapy, and how these histories shape supervision priorities.
• Apply a cross-disciplinary supervision checklist to their own supervision circumstance or situation to enhance their personal understanding of their supervisees.
• Demonstrate two supervisory prompts to operationalize cultural humility toward disciplinary identity that increase supervisee disclosure and collaborative learning.

Supervisors who work across professional disciplines need more than good intentions and general clinical experience. This course offers a thoughtful, practical framework for understanding the professional cultures that shape supervision, strengthening collaboration, and creating a supervisory space where differences can be named, respected, and used to support ethical practice and client care.

By illuminating where our professions come from and equipping you with tools that honor those differences, this webinar helps supervisors safeguard quality, align ethics across codes, and strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration. If you oversee trainees from varied backgrounds, you’re warmly invited to join us for this free course.

Format and Access

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. It consists of 1.5 hours of video instruction and a course evaluation.

Course Details

Availability: 

From the time of registration, you have six months to access the coursework.

Who Should Attend: 

This course is intended for clinicians who provide behavioral health services.

Teaching Methods: 

This is a non-interactive, self-study course. Teaching methods for this course include recorded lectures, videos, a post-test, and a course evaluation.

How to Attend: 

Course access and completion instructions.

Instructor and Disclosures

Instructor

About DaLene Forester, PhD, LMFT, LPCC

Dr. DaLene Forester specializes in the treatment of eating disorders, trauma, and clinical supervision. Now retired from private practice, she focuses on teaching and training future psychotherapists. She is an EMDRIA Approved Consultant and Trainer, a Certified Eating Disorder Specialist and Consultant (CEDS-C), and a certified supervisor with both AAMFT and CAMFT. Dr. Forester is a past president of EMDRIA and has presented at conferences including AAMFT, EMDRIA, EMDR Canada, and WPA. She has two chapters published in EMDR Solutions II, R Shaprio (ed.), W.W. Norton & Company, 2009 and one chapter published in Trauma-Informed Approaches to Eating Disorders, A. Seubert and P. Virdi (ed.) Springer Publishing Company, LLC, 2024.

Disclosure Statement: 

The instructor(s) for this course receive compensation for their services. There are no reported conflicts of interest to disclose.

CE Hours

This course does not offer CE credits, just great content.

The same course is available for purchase and offers 1.5 CE hours for behavioral health clinicians. See "related products" below.

This course is a non-interactive, online self-study.

Participants may request a printed version of their certificate of completion to be delivered by mail. A shipping/handling fee of $6.95 will be charged per request. Shipping internationally may require an additional charge.

Accommodations and Policies

Close Captioning is available for live webinars and recorded video presentations.

You can click on the following links to view our policies:

• Accommodations for Individuals with Disabilities.
• Cancellation Policy
• Grievance Policy
• Support Options
• Disclosure Statement