Symposium

India is witnessing a slow and steady growth in the number of practice-based courses offered at post graduate level in University departments of psychology.Some of these recently established training programmes weave in group and individual supervision components within them (Thomas, 2011).In the absence of standardisation and licensing procedures in the field of psychology and counselling in India, supervision serves as a space for ensuring quality, ethical and accountable practice.Despite this newly developing trend, supervision remains to be addressed inadequately (Manickam, 2010); and researched and documented poorly in India.Hence, the present symposium aims to bring voices of experienced psychotherapy supervisors from a University run Graduate level psychology and counselling programme in India.The symposium comprises of four papers.The first two papers throw light on experiences of supervising child centred psychotherapy in community and school settings, while the third and fourth paper focus on experiences of supervising trainees placed in psychiatric and couple and family therapy settings, respectively.Each of these papers begins with setting the context of field practice undertaken by trainee students, and also client concerns presented within the same.It then moves on to elaborate upon the supervisory tasks, processes, challenges and dilemmas associated with supervising trainee students.The supervisors rely upon written reports, case presentation, interpersonal process recall and case consultations to assist trainee supervisees.The papers highlight supervisors' struggles to translate western theories to the cultural realities of Indian society, and to the unique challenges of psychotherapy teaching and practice in India.They discuss the necessity of adopting dialogical methods, and balance between competency and emotion-based elements of supervision to address professional and personal issues of trainee students.The symposium highlights the need for creating supervisory models that are contextually relevant and cognizant of the socio-cultural realities of India. Supervision in child-centered counselling in school settings in India