engage in sound and supportive supervision
“Helen’s warmth and kindness have been so helpful. I can now talk more openly about my problems to other people, and in so doing, I find that I’m not alone.”
supervision testimonials
“I have always enjoyed my supervision with Helen, I am always so surprised when I hear colleagues speak negatively of their own experiences. Helen’s support, humour and empathetic understanding have been of utmost importance during the highs and lows of my clinical and teaching career. I trust Helen implicitly to offer ethical and sound guidance when I need it. I’m always impressed at her current knowledge of the developments in the field of counselling. I would recommend Helen to any practitioner if they want to engage in sound and supportive supervision.”
“Helen was my counselling supervisor during my placement as a counselling student. She has always been warm and encouraging about my ability to work with clients. Her good humoured response as I described my client work raised my level of self confidence many times. I value her highly developed sense of ethical issues, and trust that she will quickly pick them out when they need to be considered. So, I returned to see Helen years later, as a qualified counsellor, when I had moved to a different town. This was I think because I trusted her respect, warmth and sense of fun, which I certainly enjoyed.”
“I am heartened and deeply appreciative of the collaborative relationship we have developed over the 8 years we have been working together. Helen is a supervisor to cherish and I have no hesitation in recommending her to any of my counselling colleagues who are seeking to find a supportive, empathic, congruent, caring, knowledgeable and ethical supervisor.”
“I would like to mention Helen’s thoughtfulness; nothing is unconsidered or uncommitted and the environment she works to create is that of conduciveness and organisation without ever losing warmth.”
“Helen is certainly an excellent supervisor for trainees and anyone embarking on adult counselling in voluntary agency work. This is how I met Helen. She was very helpful and supportive as I faced the challenges of completing my professional training and particularly preparing for my final oral exam panel for qualification.”
“I have been working with Helen for 6 years now. She has supervised me through my insecure years as a student, my tentative years setting up in private practice and now my competent years as I train as a supervisor.”
“To me, one of Helen’s greatest qualities is the warm, trusting, holding environment that she provides. This enabled me to feel very supported and able to express any inner conflicts within myself and my client work, knowing that I wouldn’t be judged, but treated with care, respect and understanding.”
“Helen is a highly experienced supervisor who has always felt like a safe pair of hands for me to entrust with my professional supervision. Her modality and mine are different, without any significant issues arising. Helen is the only supervisor I have worked with who in supervision, on occasions, spent as much time focussing on the counsellor as on their clients.”
“With the steady and nurturing gaze of Helen upon me, I thrive and begin to bring her compassion for me into my experience. You will not find better or want for more.”
“Her understanding helps me recognize my strengths and become kinder to others and myself. When I was terrified of losing my hearing, she did not palm me off with platitudes, but faced the difficult reality with me from a broader, more spiritual position. I did not feel alone. I felt understood when there were no ways out.”
“Helen was highly instrumental in helping me have the confidence to set up and start my private practice in a thorough and professional way.”
“In the early years when I was full of self-doubt, Helen reassured me and encouraged me to recognise my doubt as the very thing that kept me ethical. Helen reframed what I called ‘my counselling crimes’ as unique ways of communicating my empathy for my clients.”
“Helen gives strong emphasis on the care and support of the counsellor, as well as for their clients. This was signalled most strongly for me when she intervened during a group supervision session to halt my work with a new and very disturbed elderly client, who she felt was in need of far more than the counselling we could offer. After my initial session with this client in a home-based session, which I coped with but felt I’d survived, she made clear that I would not return there, to ensure my own personal safety. Instead we agreed a course of action that ensured the client was suitably referred to full psychiatric assessment and treatment. The client, who had been dissatisfied with all previous offers of support from various professionals, subsequently wrote a letter of thanks about my initial session with him, and our ongoing care for his welfare. An important lesson for me in understanding the limits to my experience and skills, and taking difficult but responsible decisions.”
“The client presentations are always met with compassion and understanding. The client’s welfare is never side-lined and though I have felt completely trusted to make clinical decisions, Helen’s wealth of knowledge also comes into play to make suggestions for further development.”
“I place great trust in Helen’s integrity. Her calming presence is borne of a wealth of knowledge, experience and wisdom lightly worn.”
“She has really made me feel that I am worth her time and I have something to bring to the profession. Helen has powerful skills in highlighting elements of my counselling practice, and ensuring that I acknowledge my strengths and broadening expertise, rather than take them for granted or minimize them.”
“Helen’s depth of understanding, both intellectual and emotionally is unsurpassable – she meets me where I am, with trust, encouragement, confidence and compassion.”
“I first met Helen when I was a counsellor in training. She was the supervisor in my first placement offering emotional support to carers. I have been inspired, encouraged, supported and held by Helen throughout my career both as a counsellor and now as a supervisor, up to the present day. Helen’s style is collaborative, facilitative, and exploratory and she has the capacity to put herself in another’s shoes and evaluate from another person’s perspective with warmth and a generosity of spirit.”
“My engagement with Helen is collaborative and forms both a monitoring and supportive presence for both my clients and me. Trust is key in this relationship. I value the respect, transparency and autonomy, caring and gentle challenging that I experience in a strong and empowering therapeutic relationship with Helen.”
“Helen was providing holiday cover for my supervisor for two sessions. She offered genuine warmth and affirmation in her welcome and gentle demeanour. She was able to hold and contain the recent death of my mother with understanding and appropriate professionalism. She gave helpful insight into the clients brought for discussion. Helen trusted my process and this instilled confidence and self-acceptance.”
“Helen walks beside me, in tune with my clients, and me and has the capacity to encourage, mentor and celebrate my growing understanding of what it means to be a humanistic counsellor. I cannot speak highly enough of the blessing it has been to encounter Helen when I started on my journey into a profession which I both value and love today. From the outset, Helen gently encouraged and challenged me, where appropriate, with her insight into my own process as a counsellor-in-training. This not only helped me to become more confident in trusting my own ethical awareness, it also affirmed my congruence, intuitive response and sense of being in relationship with my clients.”
“Helen is open, honest and always willing to listen; she offers a real sense of understanding and compassion. Helen is acutely aware of the importance of her duty of care to her supervisees and their wellbeing. She is strongly ethically minded; she appreciates the complexity of working with clients, is able to bring context, truth and has mindfulness at the core of her practice.”
“Helen challenges in a supportive, insightful manner, which comes from a place of awareness, grounded in theory and the lived experience of working with clients and supervisees. Helen has compassion as a human being and this is one of the qualities I most admire and warm to as she reflects, suggests, considers and explores the complexity of ensuring that our clients remain at the centre of our work together.”
“In my own work, I am always open to learning from my clients and I felt that Helen showed this same quality in our work together.”
“If I ever felt unsure about a client dilemma, I knew I wouldn’t have to hold it until our next meeting, as Helen was willing to give me time, over the phone, to discuss and work through where I was in myself and what action I needed to take, if any.”
“Helen has so much understanding of the BACP Ethical Framework and with that knowledge and Helen’s gentle guidance, I developed greater confidence in my work and my ability as a counsellor.”
“My experience with Helen, as a supervisor, has been of immense value to me and I would heartily recommend her to others.”
“Helen was my counselling supervisor during my placement as a counselling student. She has always been warm and encouraging about my ability to work with clients. Her good-humoured response as I described my client work raised my level of self-confidence many a time.”
“As a supervisor, Helen very much embodies the person-centred approach in her work and way of being. As a supervisee, I have experienced Helen as an excellent model for the core conditions. This valuable experience has enhanced and challenged my own work with clients. Helen has enabled me to develop as a counsellor by seeing me in a holistic way and offering me a working relationship based on openness and trust.”
“Helen provides supervisees with a safe and ethical framework from which to explore good practice with clients. Helen is always very sensitive to the needs of supervisees in their own personal circumstances. I would be happy to recommend Helen to any supervisee seeking to enhance their own personal development and professional work with clients. Helen is a strong upholder of professional ethics and standards herself, and she expects the same of her supervisees. She makes a point of highlighting good practice.”
“I have greatly enjoyed the very positive working relationship we have developed; it has been significant in helping me establish my own counselling practice.”
