Social Work & Mental Health Supervision Resources

I make no guarantee to the qualifications or competence of those listed below. I do not endorse, approve of, or make any warranties or representations as to accuracy of the information contained in any site to which any user may be linked. 

Liberation Healing Seattle is intended to be used for informational purposes only.

Please do not treat Liberation Healing Seattle as a substitute for professional mental health advice. Liberation Healing Seattle will not be held responsible for your use or application of the information you obtain from Liberation Healing Seattle.

supervision resources

Supervision Resources

Click on each box below to expand and see more resources.

    • If you want to get your license ASAP, apply the day when you receive your diploma

    • If you are less in a hurry, apply in the 1-4 weeks after you graduate and receive your diploma

    • DOH takes anywhere from 1-4 months to process your license

    • Check application processing times here.

    -

    Current Associate Forms

    • Remember to reapply every year and pay the appropriate fee.

    • Click here to renew your license.

    • As of March 2025, the fees are as follows:

      • Mental Health Counselor:

        • Renewal - $25

      • Marriage & Family Therapy:

        • Renewal - $66* (* Includes the $16 fee to access the University of Washington HEAL-WA health resources website)

      • Social Work:

        • Renewal- $25

        • UW online access fee (HEAL-WA) - $16*

          • Total: $41

    • Your license’s expiration date is your birthdate and the following year.

    • If you forget to reapply, this will impact your employment as well as legal issues as you were not properly licensed as an associate and were seeing clients.

    • Complete all necessary annual CEU requirements

      • CEU requirements for associates

      • ”Applicants applying for licensure as a licensed marriage and family therapist, licensed mental health counselor or licensed social worker must have completed 36 hours of CE, six of which must be in professional law and ethics. They must have received these hours after completing the academic requirements and prior to the department issuing their license.”

    • There are a variety of mental health workplaces/environments in Washington State

    • You can choose to work full time, part time, or per-diem positions depending on your life circumstances such as health issues, income needs, health insurance needs, parenting needs, etc.

    • This can include:

      • Community mental health

      • Veteran’s Administration (VA)

      • Hospitals

      • Medical clinics

      • Schools and colleges

      • Residential treatment facilities

      • Substance use treatment centers

      • State agencies like King County

      • City agencies like City of Seattle or City of Bellevue

      • Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) teams

      • Group practices

      • Operating your own private practice under the supervision of a licensed therapist accepting only private prayer

      • Operating your own private practice under the supervision of a licensed therapist to accept insurance through contracting with a third party or company like Mindful Therapy Group, Lemon Squeezy, Colorful Minds, Alluvial Counseling, Lycan Counseling

    • Consider your current areas of current clinical experience, strengths, areas of weaknesses, long term and short term goals, values, current clinical skills, income needs, compensation including health insurance and paid time off, support offered, supervision and types of supervision offered, professional development, and more when selecting a workplace

    • Questions to ask potential workplaces and to conduct research on:

      • What is the work schedule like? Is there the possibility for a hybrid work schedule? Is there the possibility for working less days, but longer hours such as 4-10s (4 days, 10 hours each day)?

      • Is there a probationary period for my position? If so, what is the length of time?

      • Will I be formally evaluated? What is the evaluation process like? Is it written or verbal?

      • Is individual supervision offered? If so, how often is it offered? If so, what is the person’s license type (LMFT, LMHC, PsyD, PhD, LICSW)?

      • Are there opportunities to record client sessions either via audio or video with their consent? If so, will these sessions be reviewed with my supervisor?

      • How much time off can I take off at once? Is there a maximum number of days? What is the process for requesting or taking time off?

      • Is training offered? If so, what type of training is offered? If so, how often and are CEUs offered?

      • How many clients am I expected to see weekly?

      • How many new clients will I be assigned weekly?

      • Are there performance requirements for client contact hours/direct service hours?

      • What is the average caseload for this position?

      • Is my income based on client hours? If a client no-shows or late cancels, will I still be paid?

      • What is the salary offered? What are the benefits?

      • Do you offer a professional development/CEU fund? If so, how much is it per year?

      • Do you offer paid time off for professional development such as studying for the NCC/ASWB/MFT exam?

      • How long do therapists tend to stay in this role? What are some of the reasons they leave?

      • Can I talk to current employees and ask them questions?

      • Why do you enjoy working here?

      • What are some barriers or challenges the agency faces and how does it impact the clinicians employed here?

      • And more

    Click here for employment resources in Washington State.

    • Continually studying, learning, practicing, and researching human development, mental health, therapy, and counseling (those that work harder at becoming effective therapists tend to be more effective therapists)

      • See Supershrink article here

      • According to a 2015 article, data revealed the most effective practitioners devoted 2.5 times more hours to deliberate practicing therapy skills and interventions than clinicians with average outcomes vs. engaging in an activity through reading, listening, etc.

      • According to research, length of time as a therapist does not dictate therapeutic effectiveness

      • According to research, longer amount of time in the field can sometimes lead to poorer and less effective outcomes due to lack of continual learning, studying, and deliberately practicing skills and interventions. See The Dunning–Kruger effect

    • Passion and commitment for the work

      • Having a why will sustain the work on days it’s hard and challenging

    • Asking for feedback from clients (positive, neutral, and negative) and responding and tailoring treatment accordingly

      • What is working?

      • What is not working?

      • Why isn’t this working?

    • Asking questions from more experienced therapists and colleagues

    • Being honest and authentic to yourself (congruence)

      • It is exhausting putting on a mask, being the therapist we think we “should” be, putting others on a pedestal and comparing ourselves with others

      • There is a sense of ease, calm, and relaxation in being who we are, honoring our gifts, allowing ourself to be imperfect, and showing up as we are in the therapeutic space

    • Practicing self reflection and awareness

      • Understanding our own implicit biases, areas of growth/weaknesses, our countertransference,

    • Practicing compassion for Self

      • Harsh judgement, repetitive criticism, shaming, blaming rarely helps someone grow, learn, and transform in effective clinicians

    • Practicing patience

      • The client sets the pace of change, not us

    • Practicing different levels and types of empathy (cognitive, emotional, affective)

    • Practicing flexibility

    • Practicing teaching and providing psychoeducation to clients

      • A part of therapy is providing education to clients

    • Practicing curiosity

      • Endless curiosity

    • Practicing assertive boundaries

    • Process vs. content

      • Seeing beyond what the client is saying

      • Scanning for the implicit, unconscious, and what it not being said

      • Looking for patterns and dynamics

      • Making connections

    • Being really good at asking a variety of open ended questions

    • Being really good at active listening

    • Being okay with uncertainty, ambiguity, and not knowing all the answers

      • Practice sitting in silence with a client

      • WAIT: Why am I talking?

      • WAIST: Why am I still talking?

    • There are many ways to learn how to become an effective therapist

    • This can include:

      • Experience through conducting therapy sessions

      • Talking through cases

      • Didactic learning like PowerPoint presentations and lectures

      • Reading and researching

      • Listening to podcasts

      • Watching videos

      • Recording client videos with their permission

      • Recording client audio with their permission

      • Shadowing a more experienced therapist

      • And more

    Once you understand how you learn best, communicate this to your supervisor so they can help you in the way you’d like.

    Also, commit more time to these areas of learning to conduct effective therapy.

  • The IDM highlights 3 stages of development.

    Level 1: Early/Novice/New

    • Externally focused (seeks positive feedback, structure from supervisor)

    • Highly anxious (fearful and worried about making mistakes)

    • Highly motivated (wants to perfect therapy and do the right thing)

    • Unsure and worried about feedback and evaluation

    • Focused on self

    • Limited self-awareness

    This can show up as:

    • Everything is brand new

    • Generally lacking skill and confidence

    • Asking and having many questions

    • Wanting answers

    • High anxiety, worry, and fear

    • Not wanting to make mistake(s)

    • Feeling overwhelmed with learning the foundation of therapy

    • Feeling stressed with the responsibility of being a therapist

    • Wanting to learn skills, and tools, and applying them in a more rigid and by-the-book manner

    • And more

    Supervisees need:

    • Structure

    • Direction

    • Support and reassurance

    • Normalization of fears

    • Basic skills

    • Coaching, support, guidance, teaching/education

    • More focus on content issues vs. process issues (rules, agenda, expectations, skills, interventions)

    Level 2: Middle/Transition/Adjustment

    • Greater ability to focus on and empathize with client. However, balance is still an issue. Problem can be veering into enmeshment with the client

    • Supervisee vacillates between being very confident to self-doubting and confused

    • Supervisee experiences conflict between autonomy and dependency.

    This can show up as:

    • Beginning to rely on your own abilities, intuition, instincts

    • Greater ability to reflect on one’s own feelings and thoughts vs. 100% on on the client

    • Greater ability to trust in self

    • Greater ability to

    • And more

    Supervisees need:

    • More focus on process issues vs. content issues (feelings, patterns, dynamics, countertransference, transference, unconscious material, what is not being spoken of/talked about)

    • Decision-making skills

    • Some direction

    • Focus on personal reactions and issues affecting functioning as a therapist

    Level 3: Expert/Confidence/Competence/Ongoing

    • More structure provided by supervisee

    • More focus on personal and professional integration and career decisions

    • Increased desire to personalize orientation/approach/style

    • More independent/autonomous, better understands limitations

    • Focus begins to include self-reactions to client

    This can show up as:

    • Showing up and talking through cases as colleagues vs. supervisor and supervisee

    • Power differential lessens as supervisee feels more confident and competent

    • Greater risk taking ability in sessions with clients

    • Building independence and autonomy

    • Greater ability to integrate skills, theories, interventions in a more congruent, authentic, and intuitive manner

    • Greater focus on counter transference and one’s own feelings to the client

    • And more

    Supervisees need:

    • Space and silence to process and explore topics and issues

    • Less direction and guidance from the supervisor

    • A container to handle a wide range of issues, concerns, and topics

    • Validation, support, and guidance

  • Informed Consent

    Informed consent in therapy is a crucial process where therapists share essential information with clients, allowing them to make informed decisions about their treatment.

    • Limits to confidentiality

    • Theoretical orientation and approach

    • Fee setting and insurance

    • Cancelation policy

    • Communication policy in between sessions

    • Risks and benefits of therapy

    • Alternatives to treatment approach/type

    • Endings and terminations

    • Affirming client’s choices and agency to say no and yes

    • And more

    Treatment planning

    A treatment plan refers to the specific goals clients have in therapy and interventions a therapist might use to help you reach the goals.

    • Assessment

    • Diagnosis

    • Interventions and skills

    • Goals

    Diagnoses and assessments

    • Completing an assessment

    • Providing clients with diagnosis(es) if they ask for it

    • Providing clients with a diagnosis(es) if required such as if the client uses insurance

    • And more

    Documentation and writing notes

    • Different styles and ways of writing notes. This can include:

      • DAP

      • SOAP

    The Frame

    The frame is the context in which psychotherapy occurs and all the arrangements that go with it. Think of the frame as the “rules of engagement” for treatment.

    • Fees and insurance

    • Communication in between sessions

    • Cancelation policy

    • Ending sessions on time

    • Scheduling appointments

    • Boundary management such as dual relationships, seeing clients in public, etc.

    • Arrangement of the therapy office

    • Waiting room (or virtual waiting room)

    • And more

    Therapeutic Alliance

    • Strength and quality of the relationship between client and therapist

    • Important part of therapeutic effectiveness and success

    • Approach and modality

    • Goal consensus

    • And more

    The Therapist

    Some therapists consistently achieve better outcomes than their peers, and evidence suggests this is due to how they conduct therapy, rather than superior expertise in a specific model.

    • Confidence

    • Ability to connect to a wide range of clients

    • Personality and temperament

    • Congruence

    • Flexibility

    • Stylistic differences

    • Empathy

    • Communication skills

    • Ability to engage and explore areas of differences and diversity

    • Ability to integrate skills, knowledge, training into the work organically

    • And more

    Client Expectations

    In therapy, managing client expectations is crucial for a successful therapeutic relationship and positive outcomes.

    This involves clearly communicating the process, roles, and boundaries, and addressing both realistic and unrealistic expectations to ensure clients feel understood and supported.

    • Providing psychoeducation

    • Dispelling myths and misconceptions about therapy and the process

    • Engaging the client in a collaborative relationship

    • And more

    Client Motivation

    To effectively motivate clients in therapy, therapists should focus on building a strong therapeutic alliance, setting realistic and achievable goals, exploring client values, and utilizing motivational interviewing techniques to foster intrinsic motivation and address resistance.

    • Doing the work outside of session

    • Client’s strengths and resilience

    • Client’s barriers, challenges, areas of growth

    • Assigning optional homework

    • If assigning optional homework, understanding why or why not the client does not engage or complete homework (e.g. barriers & challenges)

    • Personality and temperament

    • Values

    • Culture

    • And more

    Cultural considerations and engaging with difference an diversity

    In therapy, acknowledging and respecting cultural differences is crucial for building trust, understanding clients' experiences, and tailoring interventions for better outcomes. Therapists should be culturally competent, continuously learning, and open to diverse perspectives.

    • Managing bias

    • Managing counter transference

    • Engaging with systemic issues in the 1-1 relationship in therapy (racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, transphobia, etc.)

    • And more

    Providing Psychoeducation

    • Informed consent

    • On the process of therapy

    • Mental health diagnosis

    • Symptoms

    • Treatment options

    • Providing verbal psychoeducation

    • Providing worksheets

    • Providing resources

    • Helps with:

      • Reducing stigma

      • Promotion of self-efficacy

      • Awareness and understanding

      • Insight

      • Helps improve client treatment compliance/collaboration

    Essential Therapeutic Skills

    • Empathy

    • Active listening

    • Flexibility

    • Adaptability

    • Genuineness

    • Communication skills

    • Asking open ended questions

    • Providing feedback

    • Reflection

    • Summarizing

    • Paraphrasing

    • And more

    Ruptures, disagreements and repairs

    • Providing education ruptures and disagreements are to be expected

    • Repairing in the moment when ruptures occur

    • Providing a corrective experience for clients

    • Modeling imperfection

    • Regulating ourselves and taking care of ourselves as therapists if we find conflict, disagreements, ruptures difficult and challenging

    • And more

    Anticipating obstacles and challenges

    • Resistance

    • Protectors and defenses

    • Impasse and feeling stuck

    • Enactments

    • And more

    Saying goodbye, endings and terminations

    • Client’s relationship to endings and goodbyes

    • Our own relationship as therapists to endings and goodbye

    • How does the client want to say goodbye?

    • Reviewing areas of growth and positive changes

    • Reviewing continued areas of growth and challenges toward change

    • Providing ample space for underlying thoughts and feelings around endings and saying goodbye

    • Self disclosing as appropriate our own thoughts and feelings about the work in service of the client and therapy

    • Understanding some clients will not want a goodbye session and will “ghost” us or avoid the last session and not take it personally, even though it may feel personal at times

    • And more

  • Check application processing times here.

  • Many supervisees are nervous, anxious, and stressed about supervision.

    This makes sense because supervision can be vulnerable and uncomfortable to discuss parts of you and your practice that you find challenging and difficult.

    Finding a good fit supervisor can help with alleviating stress and nervousness.

    1. Look through Washington Department of Health listing.

    2. You can ask peers and colleagues how they find their supervisors.

    3. You can look through supervisor listings including:

      1. Washington State Society for Clinical Social Work

      2. Motivo

      3. Counseling Washington

      4. Psychology Today

    4. You can look through therapy directory listings including:

      1. Multicultural Therapists

      2. Therapy Den

      3. Inclusive Therapists

      4. The Washington Therapy Fund

      5. Asian Mental Health Collective

      6. Deconstructing The Mental Health System

      7. Latinx Therapists

      8. Therapy For Black Girls

      9. Gaylesta

      10. Ingersoll

    5. You can ask past professors and lecturers for recommendations or if they themselves offer supervision.

    6. You can Google/do an online search for clinical supervisors.

    7. You can join Meet Up groups

    8. You can join the WA Mental Health List Serv and post a request.

    9. You can post a request on various Facebook therapist groups including

      1. WA State Clinical Supervisors and Supervisees Support

    Verify Your Supervisor’s License

    Make sure there has been at least 2 years since the supervisor’s initial independent license was issued.

    Also check to see if there are any complaints, suspensions, revocations, and/or other issues with the supervisor’s license.

    From WAC 246-809-234:

    “To supervise a license candidate, you shall hold a license without restrictions that has been in good standing for at least two years.”

  • Marriage & Family Therapists

    • MFT Exam

    • License applicants must pass the Association of Marital and Family Therapy Regulatory Boards (AMFTRB) exam. Professional Testing Corporation (PTC) and the AMFTRB establish the passing score for the exam. PTC administers the exam.

    • The Department of Health application process may take six to eight weeks. Please factor in this time if you plan to test in a specific testing window.

    • You may register for the exam any time after applying for the licensed marriage and family therapist or the licensed marriage and family therapy associate credential.

    • You'll need to submit your request using the request for examination form (PDF) to the department to request to sit for examination at least 60 days before the administration of the exam you wish to take.

    • Based on your contact information in our credentialing system, we'll email or mail you an exam approval letter with instructions on how to register for exam once we've processed your request.

    Mental Health Counselors

    • NCE & NCMHCE Exam

    • Applicants register to take the exam directly through the Center for Credentialing & Education (CCE), which is an affiliate of the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC).

    • The National Counselor Examination (NCE) and the National Clinical Mental Health Counselor Examination (NCMHCE) are accepted for licensure in Washington State.

    Social Workers

    1. Apply for your LSWAIC/LMHCA/LMFTA within 90-days of graduating. I recommend applying the day you receive your diploma.

    2. Follow all instructions for the LSWAIC/LMHCA/LMFTA application. If the application wants you to use black ink for a physical application, do not use blue ink. Use black ink.

    3. Wait several months (usually 2-5 months, but at its worst due to staffing shortages and other issues, 9-months) for the DOH to issue your credential. Take a vacation, rest, sleep, travel, find a temporary part time job before you’re issued your credential. You’re allowed to practice and see clients once issued your credential.

    4. Learn about the requirements of renewal for your LSWAIC/LMHCA/LMFTA.

    5. Renew your LSWAIC/LMHCA/LMFTA before it expires.

    6. Confirm your supervisor is an Approved Supervisor.

    7. Document all your experience and supervision hours. Create an Excel sheet. Have supervisor(s) sign off on this at least once every 1-3 months. I’ve heard of horror stories where supervisors pass away/die, refuse to sign off on supervision hours, etc.

    8. Periodically send your documented supervision hours to the DOH (every 4-6 months). Keep a copy for your records.

    9. Meet the minimum continuing education credits for licensure renewal annually. Keep your CEU documentation for at least 4 years in a Google Drive/somewhere safe.

    10. Contact the Department of Health if you have questions via email/message for written documentation.

    11. Stay informed with the Department of Health’s updates.

    12. Stay informed with your profession’s updates.

    13. Review the exam breakdown/outline for your respective profession and study for areas of growth ongoing. This is a much more effective study method than cramming your studying into several weeks or month once you accrue enough hours/meet the minimum length of time to apply for independent licensure.

    14. Ask for help. We can rarely do things alone. Develop a peer support or consultation group. Find an effective and good fit supervisor.

    15. Seek out your own personal counseling.

  • It is your responsibility to:

    1) Verify your supervisor meets the approved supervisor requirements for your intended profession,

    2) Maintain documentation of work done and supervision hours provided/completed, and

    3) Periodically submit documentation of supervision hours completed to the DOH.

  • Click on the underlined links to learn more.

    • Your identity as a therapist is who you are as a person.

    • Eventually, the bridge between professional and personal will be less divided and merge. Essentially, you will become more congruent. You may be more comfortable showing up as you are in session. Alternatively, you may learn to psychoanalyze less in your personal life and just be a human being vs. a therapist.

    • Developing your identity as a therapist requires working on yourself, reflecting on your values, engaging in values oriented work, engaging in hobbies, discovering more parts of yourself, experimenting and trying new things out, and more.

    • Eventually, you might want to supervisee early career associate therapists, passing along the knowledge and wisdom you’ve learned for the past 4-7 years to the next generation of therapists

    • Or perhaps you want to expand out of 1-1 therapy and become an adjunct lecturer and teach at your alma mater. Or perhaps you’d like to present workshops and presentations to local agencies or corporations.

    • You might want to change the way you practice such as incorporating a new modality or approach.

    • Spend more time, money, and effort into learning 1-2 modalities in depth.

    • This can mean: enrolling in a substantial workshop/training/seminar along with continued consultation hours

    • When you attend a training or workshop, you will learn something about yourself, your work, your clients. Or you may realize you are already doing something the training is teaching and this will affirm and reaffirm your confidence and trust in yourself as a clinician. You will meet other therapists, build community and feel less alone.

    • Essentially, you will be given new insight and perspective. This is the power of attending an effective and compelling workshop or training.

    • With increased training, learning, time, practice, effort, repetition, reflection, awareness, you will feel more confident in yourself and your work.

    • Increased confidence possible and is part of the developmental process.

    • This could show up as: less impostor syndrome (increased confidence), less questioning in your abilities (increased sense of affirmation), less focus on the client during peer or professional consultation (more focus on your own reactions and feelings), less worry about “messing up the client” because of lack of training and skill (increased ability to understand your areas of strength and continued areas of growth),

    • In this phase, you will integrate the science/evidence base as well as the art/style of therapy. Instead of adhering to a modality in a rigid or strict manner, you will learn more to trust in your intuition, develop a style of therapy, and know when to intervene with a skill or question.

    • Continuing to engage in professional consultation with a consultation, peers, or colleagues

    • If we do not continually engage in lifelong learning, we are prone to overestimating our abilities and/or underestimating our abilities

    • Under estimation of our abilities as therapist is common and is actually helpful in small doses to avoid over estimating our competence in an area we lack skill and training in

    • To reach our full potential of being an exceptional or extraordinary therapist, we must work at it, receive ongoing support, and skills must be cultivated and practiced with others (e.g. receiving ongoing consultation or supervision from a trusted advisor)

    • Continually exploring our own implicit biases and areas of growth

    • Reading books and articles

    • Listening to podcasts

    • Watching videos

    • Attending our own personal therapy

    • Engaging in continual self & community care as we are the vessels for change

    • Meeting up with other professionals to network, learn more about them, build community, and feel more connected

    • And more

  • Washington State Department of Health - Provider Search (Verify License)

  • WAC

    • Regulations of executive branch agencies are issued by authority of statutes. Like legislation and the Constitution, regulations are a source of primary law in Washington State. The Washington Administrative Code (WAC) codifies the regulations and arranges them by subject or agency.

    RCW

    • The Revised Code of Washington (RCW) is the compilation of all permanent laws now in force. It is a collection of Session Laws (enacted by the Legislature, and signed by the Governor, or enacted via the initiative process), arranged by topic, with amendments added and repealed laws removed.

  • New Law Reduces Hour and Supervision Requirements for Social Work Licensure in Washington

    Governor Inslee signed 2SHB 1724 early this month, May 2023, which went into effect 5/11/2023.

    Independent Social Workers: An applicant's doctoral degree may be from any university accredited by a recognized accrediting organization, instead of only the Council on Social Work Education.

    The supervised experience hours are reduced from 4,000 hours to 3,000 hours over two years instead of three years.

    The hours of experience that must be directly supervised are reduced from 130 hours to 100 hours.

    Read more here.

    • By January 1, 2024, every health profession under RCW 18.130.040 with a CE requirement

    • Read more here and here