Alison Hood @insightworks

Group Supervision

Let's reflect and explore together with wonder and curiosity... A PACFA and AAOS accredited Supervisor, I aim to serve you and your clients by facilitating warm, trauma informed and culturally responsive Group Supervision environments. We collaborate to nurture and sustain our collective wellbeing and vitality while fostering ethical practice and mitigating the risks of vicarious trauma and burnout.

I'm committed to providing discounted Group Supervision for self-funded early career therapists therapists (PACFA Low Cost Group Supervisor Directory). These discounted online groups typically fill up well in advance and you will only see sessions with places available in the booking calendar.

Dyad supervision appointments are available for two peer therapists who wish to share the reflective space. Please book using the employer-funded or self-funded options as relevant.

Supervision in the Sand (inner west Sydney): dyads and small groups collaborate to discover new perspectives while playing reflexively with symbols and metaphors in the safe, nonjudgmental container of the sand tray.

Please review 'Key supervisory influences' and Group Supervision Guidelines. You may also wish to refer to PACFA's Community of Care Guidelines.

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Supervisory approach

Over the years I've developed an integrative, culturally responsive approach to supervision, practicing reflexively while learning from clients, other therapists and trainings. My integrative approach is informed by diverse therapeutic modalities (e.g. person centred therapy, neuropsychotherapy, somatic psychotherapy, sandplay therapy). I'm guided by the feminist psychotherapy supervisory model, particularly around issues of implicit bias, power, cultural humility and decolonisation.

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Team & peer group supervision

Is your team, practice partnership or peer group looking for a culturally responsive and trauma informed Group Supervisor? I facilitate dedicated Supervision Groups for teams of practitioners from diverse disciplines including counselling, domestic violence, women's shelters, community development and child protection. Group sessions may be scheduled regularly or ad hoc when issues or challenges arise. Email me for information and a quote.

Bookings & enquiries

Trauma informed practice

I'm guided by trauma informed principles including safety, cultural humility, trustworthiness, collaboration, empowerment and choice. As a practicing therapist, I work primarily with individuals, families and communities who are experiencing issues around complex / developmental trauma. Therapeutic practice contexts have included domestic violence, asylum seeker and refugee programs, palliative care, community health, women's health, adult survivors of childhood trauma, homelessness, case management and employment assistance program (EAP).

A lifelong learner, I am currently studying Indigenous healing practices and traditional knowledge as part of a postgraduate course in Creative Therapies.

Key supervisory influences

More sources of information and guidance practices are listed under Resources

Etuaptmumk - Two-Eyed Seeing

Etuaptmumk - Two-Eyed Seeing "refers to learning to see from one eye with the strengths of Indigenous knowledges and ways of knowing, and from the other eye with the strengths of Western knowledges and ways of knowing ... and learning to use both these eyes together, for the benefit of all."

Polyvagal Theory

You may wish to review Deb Dana's resources e.g. A beginner's guide to Polyvagal Theory and her YouTube clips e.g. Engaging the rhythm of regulation

Clinical intuition in psychotherapy: The neurobiology of embodied response

"clinicians are guided not only by conscious, explicit dialogues and intellectual investigation, but also by natural flows of emotion, energy, and body-based information—hunches, gut feelings, behavioral impulses. These natural flows are the foundation of clinical intuition, the right-brain means by which therapists perceive and respond to relational patterns and non-conscious signals during psychotherapy." Terry Marks-Tarlow, 2012

Culturally responsive practice guided by Indigenous Knowledge and Healing Practices

I have learned from, and am guided by, the 8ways pedagogy and protocols, with thanks to the Peoples in Western NSW.

PACFA's Indigenous Healing Practice Training Standards & Community of Care Guidelines

The Indigenous Healing Practice Training Standards developed by PACFA's College of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Healing Practitioners broadly defines healing as a return to wholeness and restoration of connection and relationships that are central to the wellbeing of individuals, families and extended kinship networks, Elders and the ancestors, communities, and whole of nations. Indigenous Healing Practice emerges from foundations of safety and deep listening and can facilitate self-healing – the return of spirit to its centre, the healing of others, truth-telling and dreaming.

PACFA's Community of Care Guidelines have been shared by the Diversity in Gender, Body, Kinship and Sexuality Interest Group to help members reduce unintended harm to participants from marginalised communities. The Guidelines can be used within a range of contexts including facilitating professional development, group therapy and as participants in group discussion with other therapists.

Intuition and the body

Working with trauma as a sensory experience I am particularly inspired and informed by the writings of Louis Cozolino, "instincts can be interwoven with rational thought to improve decision making" and Allan N. Schore "left brain understanding of cognitive empathy and right brain, bodily-based emotional empathy"...

Collective care, social justice and the Zone of Fabulousness

Trainer Vikki Reynolds believes that if we are able to hold people at the centre of our practice; stay with connection; and resist disconnection and enmeshment, we are more able to resist burnout and create sustainability. "It is our collective ethical obligation as practitioners to bring reasonable hope, a believe-inhope, an embodied hope to our relational work with clients, and not to steal the hope they have." Inspiring believed-in-hope as an ethical position: Vicarious resistance & justice-doing:

Practice guidelines for clinical treatment of complex trauma

Blue Knot Foundation's updated Practice Guidelines (2019) have been nationally and internationally endorsed..

Attachment, interpersonal neurobiology & emotional regulation

You may wish to listen to the Therapist Uncensored podcast and review the resources including the 'free attachment bundle'.