Providing clinical supervision to social workers, counsellors and welfare workers in rural and remote areas has become an increasingly large portion of my work in the past few years.

As technology has improved and people become more comfortable using computers to facilitate their everyday discussions, more social workers and other allied health professionals are choosing to seek out remote access supervision and support. Not only for workers who are professionally isolated, I have found that a number of workers are choosing a supervisor who is closely aligned with their own discipline, mode of practice or their speciality, whether or not the supervisor is actually in close physical proximity.

This increased comfort with remote access supervision has enabled me to build strong and supportive working relationships with professionals across Australia, as well as some close to home who just prefer not to travel.

Some of the things I have learned in the last few years:

· Visual images are way better than sound alone. In the beginning, I was open to phone or Skype, trying to be flexible to the needs of my supervisees. While I think flexibility is important, I have increasingly aimed to balance this with an on-going focus on what is a good enough service. Telephone supervision, without the aid of a visual image or occasional face-to-face contact, is a useful fallback position but it is best not to be the entire service.

Having worked with people in both modalities, I have come to believe that a visual image, even if imperfect, offers many aids to the building and maintenance of the supervisory relationship. As with any relationship, this is particularly important in the initial stages of working together, when trust and a shared understanding has not yet grown.

· Have a phone with a really good phone plan as a back-up, in case the technology falls in a heap suddenly. Worrying about how much credit you have left doesn’t help you to be focused and reflective as a supervisor.

· Protect your work space from distraction and encourage your supervisee to do the same thing, even if the “Skype work space” is from home - it is hard to maintain your professional stance when your pet jumps on you without warning.

· With focus and preparation, really good supervision can occur via Skype, even when a cyclone is occurring in the background!

· Be precise with appointment times - different time zones and daylight savings variations within Australia can make things tricky.

What other things have you learnt providing or receiving online or remote supervision? You can contact me via my website if you would like to share ideas on this. If you would like to know more about receiving online supervision, please email me at lisa.derham@bigpond.com or ring me on 0402 759 286.