What You Actually Need to Know Before Starting Private Practice or Supervision

1. Know Your Governing Body (and What It Actually Requires)

In Australia, there are two main bodies governing counsellor registration: ACA (Australian Counselling Association) and PACFA (Psychotherapy and Counselling Federation of Australia). Their supervision policies are broadly similar, but not identical, so it's worth checking both directly rather than assuming one applies to the other.

Both organisations also maintain registers of supervisors, searchable by the public. If you're planning to supervise, this is where prospective supervisees are likely to find you, whether or not you have your own website yet. It's worth looking at what other supervisors' listings include, and where the gaps are.

Current requirement: counsellors need 10 hours of supervision per year. That said, this figure isn't fixed. There are active proposals to increase it to 20 hours per year, with discussion happening across the profession right now. If you're building a business case around supervision demand, this is a meaningful data point: rising minimum requirements generally mean rising demand for supervisors.

You'll also want a working understanding of the relevant code of ethics for whichever body you're registered under. As a supervisor specifically, part of your role is ensuring the counsellors you supervise aren't breaching this code or putting clients at risk, so it's not optional reading.

2. Understand How Supervision Is Actually Priced and Structured

This is one of the most practical (and least talked about) parts of the research phase. Based on current norms:

• Individual supervision rates are largely up to you to set. A common benchmark sits around $130 to $140 per hour.
• Group supervision is typically priced lower, often around the $80 per hour mark, which aligns with PACFA-referenced standards.
• Group sessions generally work best with no more than 6 participants, with 4 to 5 considered ideal for genuine engagement.
• Sessions can run 1.5 to 2 hours. Importantly, supervision cannot exceed 2 hours in a single session, because beyond that point it's reclassified as “training” by the professional bodies, which has different implications.

Knowing these numbers before you set your own fees means you're pricing based on the actual market, not guesswork.

3. Understand the Compliance Side of Supervising Others

If you're moving from counsellor to supervisor, there's an added layer of responsibility. Supervisees typically need their supervision hours signed off, usually via logbooks submitted to you. It's also worth tracking each supervisee's registration or membership number, so you have a record confirming they're currently practising legally and in good standing.

This isn't just admin for admin's sake. It's part of your professional accountability as a supervisor, and it's worth understanding early rather than improvising later.

4. Understand Your Own Capacity Numbers

Part of researching this decision well is being honest about your current workload. ACA guidance recommends no more than 20 client hours per week. If you're currently seeing more than that (some counsellors report 25 to 30 client hours across a full working week) it's worth factoring that into your plan. Many counsellors consider supervision income specifically because it could eventually allow them to reduce client-facing days, but that only works if the numbers genuinely support it.

It's also worth noting: supervisors need their own supervision too. Many maintain both an external individual supervisor (commonly monthly) and internal group supervision. Budgeting time and cost for your own ongoing supervision should be part of your research, not an afterthought.

5. Research the Tools and Systems Available (and Where They Fall Short)

This is usually where counsellors hit a wall. Most existing tools are built generically: booking software built for any industry, invoicing tools with no understanding of cancellation-fee norms in healthcare, note-taking systems with no compliance awareness for supervision logbooks or registration tracking.

Worth researching as you compare options:

• Does the system handle both individual and group session pricing naturally, including caps on group size and session length?
• Can it track supervisee compliance (logbook sign-off, registration numbers) or is that still manual?
• Does it support self-serve booking, rescheduling, and cancellations, with configurable late-cancellation fees?
• Can clients and supervisees pay upfront automatically, without you chasing invoices?
• Is there a place to host documents like Supervision Agreements and Group Agreements for people to access?
• Does it support case notes and intake, ideally with some AI assistance, given this is consistently the most time-consuming task for practitioners?

Most generic tools solve one or two of these. Very few solve all of them for counselling and supervision specifically.

6. Research Your Positioning, Not Just Your Systems

Information search isn't only operational. It's also about understanding your market. Within counselling and supervision, common specialty areas worth researching demand and competition for include:

• New graduate and early-career counsellors
• Counsellors working within EAP (Employee Assistance Program) companies
• Trauma and crisis counselling (similar in nature to Lifeline or Beyond Blue style work, including suicidal presentations and high emotional intensity cases)
• Culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations

Understanding which of these you're genuinely positioned to serve well will shape everything downstream, from your marketing to the systems you choose.

Where This Research Usually Leads

If you've made it through the list above, you've probably noticed a pattern: almost none of this information lives in one place. It's split across two governing bodies' websites, informal benchmarks passed between colleagues, and a patchwork of tools that each solve a small piece of the puzzle.

That fragmentation is exactly the gap we built Bloomdy to close: a single platform that understands supervision pricing norms, compliance tracking, group session rules, and the day-to-day admin of running a counselling or supervision practice, built specifically for this profession rather than adapted from a generic template.

We're not asking you to take our word for it yet. At this stage, you're still comparing options, and that's exactly as it should be.

Want the Research Done for You?

We're putting together a comparison guide on the tools and systems available for counsellors and supervisors starting private practice, and sharing it first with people on our waitlist.