Supervision Agreements and Learning Goals
Introduction
A Supervision Agreement is an essential part of engaging PBS Supervision services. This document is provided by the Supervisor and sets out how supervision will operate, including the responsibilities of the Supervisor and Supervisee, session arrangements, confidentiality, learning goals and expectations. It provides a foundation for the supervision relationship, while learning goals can be used to identify and monitor the practitioner's professional development. It’s also a document you’ll be required to provide if you’re planning to submit your registration to become a Behaviour Support Practitioner (BSP).
It’s important that you know what kinds of information should be included, and potentially what you might want to ask about if you’re currently in the process of looking for a Supervisor.
What Does a Supervision Agreement Include?
The NDIS Quality & Safeguards Commission provides an example Supervision Agreement that can be used as a basis. It details:
Date of Agreement
Supervisee name
Supervisor name
Review Date of the Agreement (usually 6 or 12 months)
Frequency of Sessions
Length of Sessions
Brief information about Confidentiality, including recording, storage of records, and limitations
Learning Goals
Standing Agenda Items for you to regularly come back to in session
A few expectations about preparation and rescheduling, and
Both parties’ signatures
It sounds already like quite a lot of information, but I often end up including more into my own Agreements as I’ve experienced new situations over the years. I’ve come to preempt quite a few questions and confusion over the years from new or prospective BSPs, and so I attempt to remedy that in advance as much as possible.
As such, my Agreements have changed in order to answer questions, clarify common points of uncertainty, and clearly state the additional boundaries and expectations I have developed as a Supervisor. My last addition better supports my Supervisees as well as myself as I’m modelling good practice they will benefit from as a Supervisee and potentially build from as a future Supervisor themselves.
I think it’s really important to emphasise this point - I can see all of my Supervisors, current and former, in the way that I provide my own Supervision and support to others. They have been my role models to learn from, after all, so they have become the foundation from which I’ve built my skills as a Supervisor. So when choosing a Supervisor, I would recommend you ask yourself, “Do I want to Supervise others like this?”. I’ve written an article to help you pick the right person here.
What I Include in My Supervision Agreements
The following isn't intended to replace the NDIS Commission's guidance. Rather, it reflects additional elements I have found useful through my own experience providing PBS supervision as mentioned above.
In addition to the NDIS Commission’s components, my Agreements also now include:
Practitioner ID numbers - To ensure I’m working with a registered BSP
Organisation names – I’ll always check whether the Supervisee is working for an NDIS provider registered for Behaviour Support. This is an important compliance check for me when providing supervision, and I don’t want either of us getting into trouble.
Method/mode of Supervision - E.g. face-to-face, online, hybrid
Services included and fees, including the necessity of reviewing restrictive practice Behaviour Support Plans for those not yet Proficient level
Time frame for first possible review of the PBS Capability Framework evidence portfolio
Ad hoc support and resources included with ongoing Supervision - I always provide up to 15 minutes of my time for free each week as it allows Supervisees the chance to check in when something doesn’t feel right or they need a little bit of support. If I made everyone wait until their session, it increases the chance of mistakes or ineffective practice
Documentation we recommend to download from the website and use or tailor for your Supervision - Agendas and Minutes (see my article here), Learning Goals (explored below)
The Supervisor’s typical style/model of Supervision - E.g. whether they use a reflective or directive approach
Payment and invoicing
AI usage and recording of sessions
Limitations of liability
Feedback/Complaints - I’ve read in the PBS Capability Framework that feedback should be provided at least annually by the Supervisee; I would recommend at least quarterly to help your Supervisor adjust their approach earlier. I talk more about evaluating Supervision here
Making changes to, or terminating, the Agreement
This list certainly is extensive and our Agreements have grown from 2 to now 6 pages of details and information over the last few years. However, this level of detail answers a lot of Supervisee’s questions, and I always prefer to clarify things at the beginning to avoid confusion later on.
If you’re seeking to engage in Supervision, please feel free to refer back to this list of prompts to see whether there’s anything you might need to ask.
What Are Supervision Learning Goals
Almost all of the information in your Supervision Agreement is already decided by your Supervisor, aside from the basic details such as frequency, duration, mode, etc.
The main section that you, as the Supervisee, have agency over is when it comes to the Learning Goals. Your Learning Goals are essentially what you want to get out of Supervision. With my Supervisees, goals often include a whole variety of things since each of us comes from a different place and has their own plans for their practice. In general there’s usually:
Areas where people want to develop a better understanding with PBS processes (e.g. how to write a Functional Behaviour Assessment, different methods of collecting Behavioural Data, etc)
How to sharpen skills to make PBS more effective and person-centered (e.g. working with non-speaking participants during appointments, managing difficult and complex stakeholders, etc)
How to improve generally as a BSP (e.g. make better use of reflective practice and debriefing, stronger caseload and time management skills, how to use quality evaluation tools such as the BSPQEII)
Professional Development Plan and PBS Capability Framework related goals
Leadership and Career goals
My recommendation: Keep the number of active learning goals manageable. I usually recommend working on around 3–4 meaningful goals during the life of a typical Supervision Agreement.
Why I Prefer Learning Goals to Sit Separately
Learning Goals are usually kept within your Supervision Agreement, however after reflecting on this and refreshing myself on the NDIS resources, I’ve recently separated this into a new document to give them their own place to shine.
I often find they remain stagnant inside a Supervision Agreement surrounded by all the other information that you don’t regularly need to refer back to. They get prepared as an aside to ensure the document can be finalised, but then 6 or 12 months later when they’re reviewed, they’re still just as applicable. This is opportunity lost to focus in your Supervision and make it work for you. Your Supervisor should be offering gentle reminders and nudges towards achieving these over the life of the Agreement; in fact, my team members sometimes joke to each other about how I’m setting them up to naturally hit goals without them even realising. However, if your Supervisor isn’t supporting you towards these (for which there can be numerous, legitimate reasons), I encourage you to champion these yourself and take clear action towards bringing them to the forefront of your Supervision.
One way you might do this is through keeping your Learning Goals as a living document under its own heading. As such, our new document is the ‘Practitioner Learning Goals and Achievement Record’ which can be downloaded within our free resources. This sister document to the Supervision Agreement allows more opportunity to consider specifics about you as a Supervisee - your current knowledge and skill strengths, your areas of interest and developing expertise, and the goals you want to achieve with your Supervisor. I often enjoy exploring these things with my Supervisees and usually have these headings within the notes I keep so this document has been built from my experience. This approach helps me keep Supervision more relevant and make sessions more meaningful. It also serves as a prompt for when I come across news, resources, or training that Supervisees might find interesting.
How Will You Achieve Your Goals?
It’s a great step to identify your goals, and especially to separate and champion them! However, they won’t be effective in improving your practice unless you make a plan for achieving them and keeping accountable to it.
You need to prepare steps for how you and your Supervisor are going to work to help you reach these goals. This might include you conducting your own research to bring and discuss during sessions, your Supervisor sending you through resources or information, diligently tackling different capabilities within the Framework to review with your Supervisor, reflecting on your emerging leadership opportunities and experiences, and more.
A time frame must also be set; many BSPs will often prioritise participant work and achieving KPIs over working on their own professional development so this will be key. In my experience, many BSPs are deeply motivated by their caring and empathetic nature, which can unfortunately be a double-edged sword. We always want to help, and what I’ve seen in my Supervisees is that helping others is more natural and comfortable than turning the spotlight on themselves.
Often my more directive moments as a Supervisor have come when I consistently see people constantly neglecting their own development to instead always put others first. Although it is a wonderful thing to be so selfless in our work, we MUST carve out time to work on our own development. If it feels selfish to do this, or embarrassing to examine yourself and your skills, work on reframing it through the lens of making you a better practitioner. Not only in terms of knowledge, skills, and achievement, but also because then you can experience first hand, that despite the internal (and external) barriers you’ve faced, you’ve overcome them and are now more skilled and capable. Which is exactly what we hope to achieve with our participants.
Now bringing us back to our Learning Goals document, the last important component to identify is who is responsible for each part of the achievement plan. It always pays to be clear about who is doing what; this equally goes for your Behaviour Support Plans. Always identify who is doing what, or else, in my experience, no one will do it (especially when the only one who loses out is you).
Keeping Track and Scoring Goals
Once you’ve established your Learning Goals, it’s time to implement and monitor! As BSPs, we do this for others, but we must also do it for ourselves. In fact, you can consider this part of your training in effective PBS. If we seek to create goals and strategies to complete them, we must also add structure into how we’ll implement steps towards these and review whether it’s working! If it’s not, we must adjust. This is the PBS approach and I would equally apply it to the way you approach your own professional development.
This section, which I call Learning Goal Achievement Record, consists of details around how the goal has been achieved, when you and your Supervisor agree it has been completed, and both of your initials. How the goal has been achieved might state that you’ve been trained in the use of the BIPQEII (a common PBSP evaluation tool) and have had a number of evaluations checked for accuracy by your Supervisor, or that you and your Supervisor have discussed across the last 3 months your transition into a leadership role and all the teething issues you might’ve experienced.
Once you’ve signed off on all of the Learning Goals together, congratulations! Take a moment to really feel accomplished as it’s no easy task to commit yourself and carry through on all the promises you’ve made to yourself about improving your practice.
However, there’s more work ahead - a new set of Learning Goals will be just around the corner when you review your current Supervision Agreement, waiting to take you to your next level of experience and professionalism as a PBS Practitioner!
In Summary, Supervision Agreement vs Learning Goals
Supervision Agreement
Establishes the supervision relationship
Sets expectations
Covers practical arrangements
Usually reviewed periodically (once every 6 or 12 months)
Defines responsibilities
Learning Goals
Identify what the practitioner wants to develop
Sets development priorities
Tracks progress
Should be updated as development progresses
Defines actions and records outcomes
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