Free Online Peer Supervision

Please note that the facilitators of these peer supervision groups do not hold legal responsibility for your professional practice. Professional bodies around the globe will differ in what counts as ‘official’ supervision or professional development activities. This is a structured peer learning forum. Do consult your professional body for clarity.

 

Support and Grow Together!

Welcome to the Online Peer Supervision Affiliate Page

Are you interested in connecting with other ACBS members online to learn together how to be more skilled with using ACT? Then Register for Drop-In Meeting Here or, if you need more information than what you see below, contact us by email: actpeersupervision@gmail.com

 

What is Peer Supervision?

The ACT Peer Supervision Group is a global forum that aims to provide learning between colleagues on the experiential practice of ACT, in a supported and safe group environment. The groups meet every two weeks. Once you’ve registered you can ‘drop-in’ to any of the groups without having to pre-book. The groups are hosted and facilitated by Peer Facilitators via the video conferencing service, Zoom. The Peer Facilitators are volunteers committed to providing a forum for collaborative learning and expanding our skills as ACT therapists. Anyone who participates can become a facilitator in due course, if they are interested.

When is it on?

Peer supervision groups meet twice a month on Fridays.

Group	Mid-March - Early November	Early November -  Mid-March
Earlier Group	11 am - 12:30 pm UTC	12 pm - 1:30 pm UTC
Later Group	2 pm - 3:30 pm UTC	3 pm - 4:30 pm UTC

You can use this link to convert Universal time to your local time time and date converter.

Once you have registered, you will also receive a welcome email and then a reminder email every two weeks regarding the next group.
 

Why is Peer Supervision useful?

There are a number of reasons:

1. Opportunity to learn from ACT practitioners from around the world.
ACT is relatively new, so it can feel isolating using this approach without the support of colleagues nearby. This ACT peer supervision group allows us to learn from one another and create a community of people collaboratively learning, supporting and sharing knowledge.

2. Low cost (it's FREE!)
Regular skills development is vital but cost can be a barrier to practitioner development. These peer supervision groups are free for ACBS members.

3. Learning in a safe and supportive community
Peer supervision allows people at all levels of practice, from ACT trainers to people curious about how ACT works, to practice their skills, in a safe environment. As peers, everyone in the group including the facilitators take turns in the different learning roles. Growing personally and professionally requires us to be vulnerable. The facilitators of the peer supervision groups are aware of this and work to create a supportive environment that allows everyone to give and receive guidance and feedback in a positive and respectful way.

4. Convenient
In our busy, and sometimes quickly changing, schedules it is not always possible to commit to regular meetings. We have ‘drop-in’ groups every other week allowing you to attend when your schedule suits you, so if you miss one group you can always join another one.

5. Unique ‘real-play’ experiential learning
Reading, hearing or watching someone doing ACT gives us some idea about this approach, but it is through the actual practice of using the different elements within the ACT Hexaflex that deeper understanding, learning and growth takes place. These groups provide an opportunity to learn through experiential practice. All of our facilitators are trained and aware of the goal to keep the meetings as “experiential” as possible and will help the group to stay on track.

These groups have been adapted from the Portland Model of peer consultation. This model sets out a number of roles that participants can try out. This allows everyone the chance to develop their own therapeutic style, and observe other peoples’ ways of working. This model uses a ‘real-play’ approach where participants work with experiences that occur in the present moment, rather than with a memory or pretend scenario, as you would through ‘role-play’. This unique approach creates opportunities for participants to experience the different elements of the ACT Hexaflex.

What you can expect at the meetings

The meetings are hosted by Peer Facilitators. These are volunteers who have made a commitment to support participants and themselves be more skilful ACT therapists. Everyone is expected to participate to make the meetings work and support each other with feedback and encouragement.
Meetings are structured to help maintain purpose and focus for the group, with distinct roles for all participants
 

1. Welcome: When you join the Zoom meeting two facilitators will be there to welcome you. Please arrive 5 minutes before the start so that we can start promptly. When the group starts the room will be locked to create safety within the group. Facilitators will move the group through the different activities in a timely way. They will also encourage everyone to participate and feel comfortable contributing to the group, by balancing the needs of new or established members, or participants who are more or less vocal.

2. Brief Mindfulness exercise: One participant volunteers to guide the group in a 3-5min mindfulness exercise. This gives them the opportunity to practice running a brief mindfulness exercise and receive feedback from the group if they wish. It also gives participants a chance to clarify what they would like to offer others and achieve for themselves at the meeting.

3. The Skills Builder: this role gives one or two participants a great opportunity to practice particular metaphors and skills or general ACT skills with another participant as the ‘client’. We all want to improve our skills, but it takes courage to learn and grow. All participants (whatever their experience) are encouraged to take on this role, and the whole group serves this growth with encouragement and respectful reflections. Two people can share the role as Skills Builder and Assistant Skills Builder. The latter is called on by the skills builder for ideas if they feel stuck.

4. The Presenter: a participant offers to step into the ‘client’ role with a personal or professional issue that the Skills Builder can use as ‘material’ as they work on their ACT skills. Experiencing ACT interventions from the “client” perspective can be a powerful way to learn. The Presenter can talk about anything, e.g. how nervous they feel to join a new group! We rely on you to judge what is appropriate to share because it is not a therapy group and the focus will be supporting the Skills Builder with their professional development.

5. Time Keeper: a participant agrees to keep time for the Skills Builder during their 10-20 minute inter-vision exercise.

6. Hexaflex Monitors: The remaining participants mute their microphones so that only the pair in ‘real-play’ can be heard. However, they have the important role of supporting the Skills Builder by feeding back their observations on how they saw the Skills Builder relate to the Presenter and how they moved within the ACT Hexaflex, what they saw that worked particularly well or admired and what they might have done differently.
  

7. The Inter-vision (Real-Play) exerciseThe Inter-vision (Real-Play) exercise

The relationship between the Skills Builder and Presenter mirrors a supervisor-therapist or therapist-client pairing. At the end of the ‘real-play’ exercise the Presenter provides their experiential feedback first to the Skills Builder. Then the Skills Builder shares their experience before listening to feedback from all the other participants.The Skills Builder can have time at the end of the feedback for answering any questions raised or comment on the feedback.

8. The group ends with each participant sharing one word to describe their current emotional state (energised, gratitude etc.) or an intention that they would like to work on.

Even though each group is unique, this structure helps to guide our meetings. We find that this promotes learning and provides safety for participants to join in as and when they can.
 

 

Group requirements

• As a courtesy to others and minimise disruption during the meeting we ask participants to commit to the entire 90 minutes of the meeting or choose to attend on another day.
• Participants are asked to arrive 5 minutes before the start time to log on. Access to the meeting will not be possible 5 minutes after the start time.
• Respect Confidentiality in the group.
   

 

If you would like to join us, take these three simple steps and we’ll see you soon!

1. Register - This is a one-time registration allowing you to drop-in on days and times that work for you.  Register here: registration form.

2. Check your time zone – We receive participants from around the globe spanning several time zones. It is your responsibility to check what time the meetings take place in your time zone. This global time zone calculator may help: time and date converter. Please note that summer and wintertime changes vary from country to country. Please check when times change where you are.

3. Download the video conference application Zoom onto your computer.  You can find out about Zoom here. You will be given our Zoom Room ID's once your register. The early and late groups have different Zoom ID's which you use each week to join the meeting.

Current Peer Facilitators:

 

email: actpeersupervision@gmail.com

 

(This webpage was updated January 2023)