ABSTRACT
In the UK, The Association for Family Therapy and Systemic Practice (www.aft.org.uk) regulates and accredits the training of family therapists. It speci®es the standards of training and then becomes a route for the registration of family therapists. To qualify as a family therapist, the student has to have a set amount of live supervised practice as the primary therapist during the course of her course. This means that the student is supervised by a supervisor (a quali®ed family therapist and usually a registered supervisor) in their face to face work with families and usually this will be via the one-way screen. This model of training has been a hallmark of family therapy since its origins. Family therapy early on rejected the idea that supervision could be adequately done via case discussion. Just as the emphasis in early family therapy was on changing patterns in the room, so the training of family therapists has emphasised changing therapeutic practice in the room. It is traditional for a student's work to be videotaped so that the tapes can be reviewed to ®nd signi®cant alternative interventions and interactions. In live supervision, the supervisor can phone through to the student and suggest some alternative questions or interventions.
