Welcome to the forum
We are a friendly, peer led group of supervisors of counsellors and psychotherapists who offer training and networking to other supervisors. We are completely voluntary and non-profit making. Although we are based in Yorkshire, we are open to supervisors from outside our area and thanks to the technical wizzardary of our committee members, we can now offer attendance via Zoom in addition to in person training.
We meet three times a year in either Leeds or York to provide training workshops, support and opportunities for reflection on our supervision practice. To our knowledge we are the only group of supervisors like this in the UK, being very much a grassroots group. Sometimes we find outside speakers (see list of past events) and members also offer training events. Our members come from a wide range of different psychotherapeutic modalities so we have a rich resource to draw upon. We have a small committee which discusses and makes decisions about our programmes.
Each workshop is followed by lunch where we can all network. For those who work in private practice this is an important part of our mornings together. You are welcome to come and try us out. The fee is at cost, you will recieve an attendance certificate for your CPD and some interesting, hopefully new ideas to ponder on. We look forward to welcoming you.
Hybrid face to face and on-line presentations
Participants on Zoom will be able to see the presentation and fully interact with each other through the Chat function and break out rooms for small group discussion. Questions on the Chat may be relayed to the speaker and in-person group at appropriate moments where possible.
We are hoping this will make the presentations run more smoothly and be less clunky for everyone, which are points that have come up in the feedback.
This is a relatively new thing for us to offer coming from the lockdown Covid experience. Hence, we review the structure of our hybrid events frequently based on the feedback we get from our members. If you have any comments or suggestions then please do get in touch!
Our next online meeting
Saturday 1st February 2025 from 10am until 11am. Join us if you're free for a friendly, informal chat on issues pertaining to supervision.
Our 2025 workshops
Saturday 15th March 2025 10am -1pm in St Georges Centre Leeds, followed by the AGM.
The impact of supervising other therapy modalities on our core supervisory style and approach, facitated by Dr Yvonne Waft.
In this session, Dr. Yvonne Waft will use a mixture of formal presentation, group discussion and pair work to explore how supervising and practising multiple therapy modalities can bring benefits but also challenges to our core initial supervisor and therapeutic approach and style. Using her considerable experience of EMDR where Yvonne will go through the main expectations of practising and supervising this modality, we will explore and discuss the impact of practising other approaches on how we conduct and perhaps adapt our own supervisory style. We will share our own experiences of, and learning from, supervising other modalities.
Dr. Yvonne Waft is a Clinical Psychologist and EMDR Europe Accredited Consultant and Supervisor. In addition, Yvonne is an EMDR Europe accredited training facilitator. She is author of the recently published and highly successful book ‘Coping with Trauma, surviving and thriving in the face of overwhelming events’, copies of which will be available for sale at the event. Having worked in the NHS in West Yorkshire for many years, she now runs a busy online private therapy and supervision practice. Trained in a number of therapy modalities including Eye Movement Desensitisation and Reprocessing (EMDR), Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) and Compassion Focused Therapy (CFT), Yvonne works mainly with individuals with complex trauma presentations and supports other talking therapy professionals in their work with trauma through teaching, training and clinical supervision and offers Expert Witness services to the legal profession.
Our 2025 workshops
Saturday 21st June 2025, 10am-1pm: Theme and presenter tbc. Quaker Meeting House, York
Saturday October 19th 2025, 10am-1pm: Going into private practice; preparing trainee supervisees, facilitated by Heather Dale and Christine Bailey. Quaker Meeting House, York
Where do we meet?
We hold meetings within walking distance of either Leeds or York stations, so the locations are easily accessible. Yorkshire is a large county and we have members not only from all over Yorkshire but also further afield across the UK, so access is an issue we take seriously. With this in mind we offer attendance on line via zoom as well as face to face.
Events run from 10-1pm, followed by lunch. An important part of the day is networking with other supervisors, which can be especially valued by those of us who work in private supervision practice or who are otherwise isolated in their organisational working practice.
Do join us, and remember, we do not confine membership to Yorkshire supervisors. All supervisors are welcome.
How much does it cost?
The membership fee for the Yorkshire Supervisors’ Forum is £30 per year and our workshops cost £25 for members of the Forum and £40 for non-members. This fee is for the three-hour training session and lunch. The time counts toward CPD hours and we will provide you with an attendance certificate.
How do I book?
For a booking form, please get in touch via the email facility in this website or email Yorkshiresupervisorsforum@gmail.com. The booking form needs to be completed and returned to the booking secretary along with the payment. Details are on the form. The cost is £40.00 for non-members and £25 for members (concessionary fee). Lunch is included in the cost. Payment can be made either by cheque or by on-line banking. Cheques should be made payable to Yorkshire Supervisors’ Forum. For on-line banking please transfer the full fee to Yorkshire Supervisors Forum, Sort code 40-27-15, account no 44254856. Please add your name and the reason for the payment as the reference.
Finally, please note that by filling in the booking form, you accept our terms and conditions. You can cancel your booking and receive a FULL refund any time up to 30 days before the event. After that, NO refund is possible and the full fee will be retained. This is because we have already committed to booking the accommodation and food for the event and are unable ourselves to change our financial obligations. Thank you.
Please feel free to get in touch.
If you are a counsellor or psychotherapist and also a supervisor, anywhere in the UK or from elsewhere, we would love to meet you. You are also welcome if you are on a supervision training course. Please contact us via this website to be put on our mailing list and you will be automatically informed of the next meeting. If you would just like more information, please contact us via the web site. The current members have all found many benefits of being part of the Forum and we invite you to come along and experience this for yourself.
Looking forward to meeting you at our next meeting.
Changes to data protection legislation
All private psychotherapists, counsellors and supervisors should register with ICO (data protection) from May 2018. Further information is available from the ico.org.uk website .
Thoughts for delivering a topic at our workshops
If anyone has any ideas for future topics, within a supervision context, that they would like YSF to deliver, or knows of anyone who presents CPD from a supervision perspective, then please feel free to drop us a line. We are always open to new ideas, members and topics.
Our ethos
YSF Equality and Diversity Statement:
The views expressed by each person(s) facilitating our workshops are their personal views and do not necessarily reflect the view of the YSF Committee or its membership. We are committed to providing inclusive events which are respectful to all. We are opposed to all forms of unlawful and unfair discrimination. We aim to provide equally respectful treatment to all people.
Peer-led Supervisors’ CPD Group Leads The Way in Yorkshire. (Article submitted to the BACP journal)
Peer-led Supervisors’ CPD Group Leads The Way in Yorkshire.
A search on-line of the words ‘peer led training group’ for supervisors of counsellors and psychotherapists only comes up with supervision courses offered by universities and other providers for counsellors to train to become supervisors.
You have become a supervisor and you may work largely alone in private practice. What happens after that? What opportunities do supervisors have to meet each other and feel like they are part of something collegiate and supportive? How hard is it to access regular, good quality, face-to-face, continuous professional development (CPD) training which is offered at cost price rather than for profit?
Imagine that it’s a Saturday morning and you’re awaiting a three-hour training session which is related to the supervisory process. Your fellow trainees are all supervisors from a wide range of psychotherapeutic modalities. They are all experienced practitioners with a rich pool of wisdom to draw upon. The atmosphere is friendly, informal even and there’s laughter in the room. The sharing of opinions, questions, concerns about the theme continue through the morning. At lunch, you learn that some of the participants live near you and want to meet up. You leave with names, contact details, ideas for reflection and even left-overs from the delicious lunch.
We at Yorkshire Supervisors’ Forum (YSF) feel that we are part of a group which has evolved into something which is unique in the UK. The purpose of this article is to tell you about it and hopefully, you will be inspired to set up your own group in your area.
YSF was set up in 2005 to provide continuing professional development for experienced, qualified supervisors in counselling and psychotherapy and continues to do so today. We are a small peer-led group of about 40 members, seven of whom are committee members who voluntarily run the group and organise our events. Despite our name, our membership is open to supervisors of counsellors and psychotherapists across the UK and since the Covid pandemic we run hybrid events.
We were originally established by a group of graduates from a supervision course run by the Westminster Pastoral Foundation (WPF) from its former base in Leeds. Tim Gauntlet and Helen Barraclough, who were running the supervision course, were our founding members.
Three times a year in either Leeds or York we arrange morning CPD events followed by lunch. Often our members present topics and sometimes guest speakers join us.
The topics of our events are wide ranging. We try to respond to what our membership are interested in. Back in 2008, Steve Page and Lesley Murphy discussed “Gender and Supervision: Identity, Relationship and Dynamics”. Helen Barraclough looked at the emergence of the erotic transference, Barbara Lawton explored aspects of power in the supervisory relationship and Penny Tharratt looked at gender and diversity in group supervision.
In 2016, we celebrated our 10th Anniversary and named the celebratory event “Passion and Creativity in the Supervisory Relationship Revisited... what is it that enlivens, stimulates and creates passion in our work?”. Later that year, Anthea Miller explored “Second-hand Shock and Supervision” giving attendees an opportunity to think about compassion fatigue, vicarious trauma and burn-out. The following year we looked at the implications for supervisors of the changes being undertaken across BACP, UKCP and BCP in their ethics policies and complaints procedures.
We have had events looking at diversity; supervising brief therapy; peer supervision; intuition in supervision; explored the work of Una McCluskey and the impact of her attachment/systemic model on supervision; working with neurodivergence; trauma and much, much more.
With uncanny prescience, in February 2020, the late Dr Kate Anthony, an early adopter of, and researcher into the use of, the internet for creating therapeutic relationships, presented supervising on-line. Several of us sighed with relief that, despite a very interesting event, we
older attendees would be able to leave that to younger colleagues. Ha! Six weeks later we were all in lockdown and on-line with our clients, supervisees, friends and family. YSF also migrated on-line and we held both our committee meetings and our regular CPD events on-line. We introduced members’ meetings on-line, to provide a more frequent informal forum for us to discuss our work and feelings about the Covid world in which we, our supervisees and our clients found ourselves.
It would not be until October 2021, when Alison Brear, drama therapist, presented on creative supervision that we met again in-person at an event in the lovely setting of The Quaker’s Meeting House at Friargate in York. Thanks to the technical expertise of our current Chair, Ian Wallace, we now have “hybrid” events with attendees able to join us both on-line and in-person – a popular set up that we’ve continued with ever since.
This year, Professor Lynne Gabriel introduced us to the theoretical concepts of ‘Decolonisation’ and delivered an event exploring how these may play out within the supervision arena. She also urged us to write something about ourselves in Therapy Today so that more people could hear about our group. We hope she did so because of our warmth, informality and commitment to open discussion.
Our current members are mostly working, in private practice, in community, education or healthcare services. Most of us are middle-aged and beyond and we are trained in a wide range of modalities including creative therapies. We feel we have between us created a unique group so it is important to ensure its regeneration and on-going viability. Our challenge is to find committed committee members and to attract new, including younger and more diversely-representative, members. We greatly value the current warm comradeship and professional curiosity of fellow members with whom we have had numerous animated conversations and shared our own practice experiences and dilemmas over the years.
We hope this article has inspired you to think about setting up your own group in your local area. If you are a supervisor of counsellors or psychotherapist and you are interested in joining us for an event or becoming a member of YSF please follow this link https://www.ysf.org.uk and contact us. You will be very welcome.
The Committee of Yorkshire Supervisors’ Forum
October 2023
