Peer Spiritual Accompaniment Guidance notes
Give and receive 50-60 minute sessions with your new spiritual accompaniment peer and write notes from the 
counsellor and client perspective.
Ensure your contract is clear and shared, and practice the skills of intention setting, pre-work to prepare yourself, and inner opening.
By the end of the year you need to have given and received 7 sessions. This means you need to do one set of sessions (i.e. giving and receiving) per month. There will be an exercise reflecting on the process which needs to be completed before Gateway 5.
These are formal spiritual counselling sessions, not conversations, and you are urged to start the relationship with clear contracting, and with as open a heart as possible, setting aside your ideas about who your peer is.
- Start with a prayer, silence, devotional practice or meditation.
- Give particular attention to your own and your peer’s relationship with the Divine.
- Engage in agreeing the practicalities of timing and the medium of communication in order to practice contracting with clients in the future.
- Take time to establish an agreement around confidentiality, using the OneSpirit confidentiality statement (see below).
- Focus on a deepening understanding of each other, maybe using your first year Creation assignment and your Lifeline, if you still have it, as a way to build a doorway into who you are.
- Include your impressions of any aspects of the second year opening residential.
- Focus on connecting and gently deepening connection with each other. Seek to clear yourself of assumptions about each other, based on the year passed: open to a new beginning.
Write-up notes of half a page to a page, both from the perspective of receiving and giving the sessions.
Whilst these notes are confidential to you, it is essential to understand that clients have the right to ask to read your notes about them, which occasionally happens. We will discuss this further in class.
Your notes are essential for your own self supervision, and they will help you when the time comes to write up Case Study 1 and 2, and when you write up your understanding of Spiritual Counselling at the end of the year. The confidentiality of your work with your peer, and the notes you make about these sessions, is an important aspect, and will be discussed further as this is a nuanced situation.
The first six sessions (3 as spiritual counsellor and 3 as client) constitute Case Study 1, so pay close attention to note-taking and self-supervision of this process. You are required to attend at least one group supervision session during this period.
We will take time together to look in more detail at the role of peer and group supervision in supporting your ministry.
You should use the confidentiality statement below and discuss it with your client before counselling takes place. When writing up your case studies do not mention the client’s name and only the issues, not the individual, will be discussed at supervision. (While tutors will of course know the identity of your peer, it is still good practice to maintain this approach as if they do not. If tutors or supervisors are concerned about the “student client” as a result of reading or hearing case notes they will ask the student counsellor to ask the client for permission to pass on their name. If tutors or supervisors feel this code has been, or has to be, broken for any reason they will inform both student counsellors and student clients).
OneSpirit’s confidentiality statement:
- We understand that sometimes information is regarded as sensitive and private and we want to respect that.
- Please be aware that sometimes we may need to share information internally, with colleagues, in order to ensure we provide you and others the necessary support. We will explain why and how such information is to be shared in such cases, and who with, so that you have the opportunity to withhold permission.
- We may also need to breach confidentiality in extreme circumstances such as:
- A serious risk to your own health and welfare.
- If your behaviour presents a serious risk to the legal rights of others.
- When staff have been placed in a position that compromises their professional integrity
- When disclosure is required by law.
- If any of the above circumstances were to arise, before any decision was made to breach confidentiality, the situation would be discussed with you.
Work on your self-directed learning experience, and move into the action phase if you haven’t already.
