Supervision of Coaches in Europe: Situation and Trends

There is a mutual agreement with ANCKNZ (Australia/New Zealand association) and EASC.

ANSE strategy is to promote the use of the ECVision Competence Framework of supervision and coaching (see below in “The role of EU”), especially in the affiliated countries in order to reach a Mutual Recognition of their supervisors. This would allow the creation of a European Supervisor Professional Card.

EASC

EASC (European Association for Supervision and Coaching) was founded in 1994 as EAS, then EASC in 2010, by experienced supervisors and supervision trainers. The objective was to create a supra-regional European association that stands for the highest quality. EASC is located in Berlin and is represented in Spain, Czech Republic and Switzerland. It has 200 members.

As coaching became more and more professionalized many members started offering coaching too. The association then developed quality standards for coaching and training in coaching based on the quality standards for supervision. EASC distinguishes between the two autonomous professions of coach (and master coach) and supervisor.

LOCAL ASSOCIATIONS

Just like EASC there are many local coaching, mentoring and supervision associations in the European countries such as SF Coach in France (Société Francaise de Coaching, 200 members), SR Coach in Switzerland (Société Romane de Coaching), AICP in Italy (310 members), SGCP in UK, etc… There are about 40 to 50 such small and medium size local associations of coaches and supervisors.

All of these associations are present in one or more countries with 60 to 300 members. All of them are more or less involved in developing their own simplified supervision competence framework and their own accreditation system for supervisors.

ACCREDITATIONS

Several of the European associations that have developed a competence framework for supervision also propose accreditations:
– EMCC has launched in September 2013 an accreditation for supervisors’ training. The certificate is called ESQA (European Supervision Quality Award). Currently 7 schools hold an ESQA.
– Several local organisations have also developed an accreditation for supervisor’s training, for instance LVSC, mentioned above, has accredited 12 supervisor schools in the Netherlands.
– Universities (Oxford Brookes in UK and several universities in Eastern countries) propose supervision academic graduations.

We estimate that there are about 150 supervisor’s schools or universities in Europe delivering a one to three years training. Between ten to twenty Ph.Ds.’ in supervision are completed or in progress.

AC (Sept 2013), EMCC (May 2015), ESIA (individual supervisors of mentors and coaches), APECS and AOCS have launched individual accreditation for coach supervisors.