The growing importance of clinical supervision makes it timely to formulate and pilot an evidence-based approach. This entails specifying a rationale for supervision skills that is grounded in research evidence and enjoys a consensus amongst supervisors, implementing an educational system to develop those skills, and evaluating the effectiveness of this approach. The present study tackles these tasks by detailing an evidence-based approach to clinical supervision; by implementing regular consultancy sessions to try and develop one supervisor's competence; and by evaluating (within a multiple baseline design) the effectiveness of these sessions and the clinical supervision provided to three supervisees. Based on systematic observations of 30 supervision sessions conducted over an 8-month period, the results indicated that the consultancy led to modest improvements in the supervision. The supervision was highly rated by the supervisees throughout the study period. Implications are drawn for developing evidence-based supervision, emphasizing the instructional and methodological components.

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The objective of this pilot study was to evaluate the relative effectiveness of two approaches to staff training. Multidisciplinary mental health staff, receiving a standard training programme (N = 45), were compared on multiple measures with an experimental group (N = 11), receiving a programme featuring a ''relapse prevention'' module. This module was designed to improve the transfer of the training. The staff receiving the relapse prevention module reported significantly greater generalization of the training. Participant variables, the delivery of the training and work environment factors did not appear to explain this favourable finding. It is concluded tentatively that a relapse prevention module shows promise as a facilitator of the transfer of training in psychosocial interventions for severe mental illness.

It is now recognised that therapists require career-long training in order to maintain and improve their expertise. However, training will fail to improve services to clients unless the work environment supports staff in its use. Although this "training transfer" problem is widely acknowledged, to the authors' knowledge the way that the work environment influences clients' access to effective therapies has not been subjected to a detailed and systematic formulation. Therefore, this small study illustrates a suitable formulation, based on the training received by a group of National Health Service (NHS) staff in "psychosocial interventions", and proposes its use as a "feedback fascia" to managers and others. To do this, structured interviews were held with a self-selected sample of n = 20 therapists (mostly nurses) and all of their managers (n = 11) in one NHS Trust. The results indicated an impressive degree of training transfer. It is concluded that staff training can improve clients' access to effective treatments, but that significant organisational support for innovation is required. A feedback fascia can guide such support.