Supervision and Ethics: Updates to the CRCC Code of Professional Ethics

Supervision is a key element to the development of ethical skills and awareness in rehabilitation counselors. Ethical standards specific to rehabilitation counselor educators and supervisors were first introduced in 2002 and updated in 2010 and 2017. This article discusses supervision and professional dispositions as constructs that were used to help frame the revision process and outlines some of the key change to Section I. (Supervision, Teaching, and Training) of the Code of Professional Ethics for certified rehabilitation counselors. In conjunction with the revision process, special considerations for multicultural competencies have been strengthened throughout Section I, as well as specific requirements for the measurement and assessment of professional dispositions in educational settings. The article helps to inform and guide supervisors, trainers, and educators as they review Section I and consider their role in the development of ethical skills in those they supervise and their own respective practice.

Introducing the QACP: development and preliminary validation of an instrument to measure psychotherapist's core competencies

The movement towards the conceptualization, description and evaluation of psychotherapists' competencies has been widely developed in the last years and has relevant implications for psychotherapy, training, and continuous education. In Italy, this movement has been supported by the Committee for Psychotherapists' Competencies established in 2010 by FIAP (Italian Federation of Psychotherapy's Associations) and CNSP (National Association of Psychotherapy's Training Institutes) and has involved more than 1000 psychotherapists from different approaches, by means of conferences, expert meetings, workshops, and focus groups. One of the outcomes of this process has been the development of a new self-assessment tool for core competencies (i.e., those that are shared by therapists from all modalities): the QACP (Questionario per l'Autovalutazione delle Competenze dello Psicoterapeuta). The present study aims to present the process of development and the preliminary proofs of the validity of this tool. Construct and knowngroup validity of the questionnaire were examined, and reliability was estimated by computing the internal consistency reliability coefficients for both the overall and the subscale scores. Overall, the instrument showed satisfactory psychometric characteristics. The limitations of the study and the results are discussed and directions for further research are proposed.

Contextual Influences on Faculty Diversity Conceptualizations When Working With Trainee Competence Problems

Trainees with problems of professional competence (TPPC) present trainers with unique challenges. When TPPC situations include diversity issues, the complexity of such challenges increases. Although attention to such intersections is important, little is known about what influences faculty thinking about diversity issues when trainee competence problems are identified. The authors analyzed 22 faculty interviews using grounded theory to explore contextual influences on faculty interactions. Participants described program commitments to diversity conversations, consultations, and examination of biases as important positive influences. Participants described historic conflicts (e.g., interpersonal and programwide) and within-faculty differences (e.g., differences in multicultural training, assumptions about diversity-related conflict) that made faculty interactions more difficult. New instances of competence problems that involved differences in opinion about the influence of diversity variables exacerbated existing conflicts and created new tensions among faculty. Implications for training and research are discussed.

Training Directors' Conceptualizations of the Intersections of Diversity and Trainee Competence Problems

Counseling psychology has demonstrated leadership on multicultural issues through serious and committed attention to diversity in scholarship, conferences, and training and recruitment. Yet a survey of the literature on trainees with competence problems resulted in limited references to race/ethnicity and/or gender (REG). Using transcripts of phone interviews, we examined the degree to which Training Directors from 14 counseling psychology doctoral programs included REG in their conceptualizations of trainee remediation. REG conceptualizations differed in terms of (a) definitional clarity and conceptual sophistication about RE, (b) differential integration of approaches to diversity and remediation, and (c) strong emotions associated with race/ethnicity in trainee remediation. Implications for training and research are discussed.