Supervision plays an important role in the development and ongoing practice of Behaviour Support Practitioners.

For practitioners working through registration or capability development, supervision can support you to identify development needs, build evidence of your capabilities and work towards greater independence in practice.

For established practitioners, supervision provides a space to reflect on complex situations, test your reasoning, recognise when you may need additional expertise or support, and continue developing your practice.

The amount and type of supervision you need may change as your experience, capability, role and caseload develop.

Rebecca is an Advanced-level Behaviour Support Practitioner and provides supervision to prospective and practising Behaviour Support Practitioners at different stages of their development.

This includes people preparing to enter the field, newly registered practitioners developing their capabilities, and more experienced practitioners looking for reflective supervision, case consultation or support with particular areas of practice.

Supervision is tailored to your current experience, development priorities and the type of work you're doing rather than following the same format for every practitioner.

Your supervision sessions are shaped around what is most useful for your practice at the time.

You might bring a case you're unsure about, a decision you want to think through, a document you're developing, a capability you're working towards, an ethical or practice dilemma, or something that simply hasn't gone the way you expected.

We may work through the situation together, examine the evidence available, identify assumptions or missing information, explore different options and decide what you want to do next.

Supervision can also include structured learning and case-based training when there is an area of practice you'd like to develop more deeply.

You don't need to arrive with the answer. Working out what you don't know yet — and what you need to do next — is part of good PBS practice.

Individual supervision gives you dedicated time to focus on your own practice, cases, development goals and questions. It can be particularly useful when you need privacy, want to explore something in depth or have specific areas you'd like to work on.

Group supervision provides opportunities to learn from other practitioners' experiences, hear different perspectives and work through practice questions collaboratively.

Neither format is automatically better. The right option depends on what you're hoping to get from supervision, and some practitioners benefit from using both.

Not sure which would suit you? Read our guide to choosing between 1-on-1 and group PBS supervision here, “1-on-1 versus Group Supervision: What Do You Need?”

Before each supervision session, we ask you to prepare a brief agenda outlining what you'd like to discuss. You can send this through ahead of the session — even an hour beforehand is helpful — so Rebecca has an opportunity to prepare where needed.

Your agenda might include a case you're uncertain about, a decision you're working through, something that hasn't gone as expected, a document you'd like to review, a capability you're developing, or an area where you'd like another perspective.

You don't need to have worked everything out before supervision. In fact, identifying what you're unsure about, what information might be missing, or where you're feeling stuck can make for a very useful supervision discussion.

Preparing an agenda also helps you take increasing ownership of your supervision and professional development. Over time, we can use your sessions to identify recurring learning needs and development priorities rather than treating each session as an isolated conversation.

Rebecca's approach to supervision is reflective, practical and focused on helping you develop your own professional judgement.

Rather than simply giving you an answer, supervision often involves exploring how you reached your conclusion, what evidence you're relying on, what you may be assuming, what other explanations are possible and what might change your mind.

Where you identify a knowledge or skill gap, supervision can also move into structured learning. Rebecca has developed case-based PBS practitioner training that can be incorporated into supervision, allowing you to practise assessment, formulation, planning, implementation and review using realistic scenarios before applying that learning in your own work.

The aim isn't for you to become dependent on your supervisor. It's to help you become increasingly capable of making thoughtful, defensible decisions yourself — while recognising when consultation or supervision is still valuable.

Yes. Document review can form part of supervision when it supports your learning or practice.

This might include reviewing a Professional Development Plan, behaviour support plan, Capability Framework evidence or another practice document and discussing the reasoning behind what you've written.

The focus isn't only on editing the finished document. Where possible, we'll use the review to identify what you're doing well, where your reasoning or evidence could be strengthened, and what you can carry forward into your next piece of work.