This session will include a focused presentation covering the key themes, case examples, conversation and followed by wider group discussion in the final part of the session.
Supporting resources will be provided in the form of practical handouts. These can be used directly within supervision sessions or shared with supervisees as a checklist to support the early identification of potential vicarious trauma and burnout.Therapists work at depth with complex relational and emotional material. Over time, this can take its toll. Supervisors play a crucial role in helping practitioners recognise when strain is building and in creating spaces that sustain both clinical integrity and practitioner well-being.
This session explores how supervision can act as both a reflective clinical space and a protective professional structure. We will examine how vicarious trauma and burnout present in practice, how they may be missed, and how supervisors can intervene constructively and ethically.
Through focused input, case discussion and shared reflection, participants will consider how to strengthen supervision conversations so that therapist well-being is actively supported without losing sight of clinical rigour and service user safety.
Learning Outcomes
At the end of the seminar, participants will be able to:
- How to recognise and respond to signs of vicarious trauma, burnout, and emotional strain in both themselves and the therapists they supervise.
- How to build supervision spaces that actively support therapist wellbeing while maintaining clear clinical focus, ethical standards, and high-quality client care.
About the Trainer
Trudy Hannington is a Senior Psychosexual Therapist. She has worked in sexual health for over 25 years, and specialises in combining medical treatments with sex therapy.
Trudy Hannington is the Senior Psychosexual Therapist who leads a team of 4 psychosexual therapists at the Leger clinic at Doncaster, South Yorkshire, England.
Trudy has worked in sexual health for over 25 years and specialised as a psychosexual therapist in 2002 after training at the Porterbrook Clinic at Sheffield.
Trudy’s specialist interest is combining medical treatments with sex therapy to optimise outcomes for patients.
She is one of the founders of STOPSO (Special Treatment Organisation for Perpetrators and Survivors of Sexual Offending).
Trudy was also the specialist psychosexual therapist in the Channel 4 documentary “The Week The Women Came”
- Wrote the chapter on sex therapy in the 4th edition of the ABC of Sex
- Wrote the concluding chapter in the book “Testosterone Deficiency” by Professor Hugh Jones
- Written contribution to the BSSM (British Society For Sexual Medicine) Women’s Health Book including case studies.
- You tube video release on prostate cancer with male care
- Various radio and newspaper contributions
- Written the chapter for the new to be released book for STOPSO on why non offending partners stay with a sex offender titled “should I stay or should I go”
Senior Accredited member and Supervisor of COSRT (College for Sex & Relationship Therapists) and Fellow of COSRT
A former Chair of the College of Sexual and Relationship Therapists (COSRT).
Won Yorkshire Woman of the Year award in 2004.
She is also a Committee Member for the British Society of Sexual Medicine and current Treasurer.
Highly qualified in this field Trudy Hannington’s team has NHS contracts with a number of NHS areas in the region and also sees patients on a private basis.
She has lectured nationally and internationally, on the Management of Sexual Dysfunction, most recently in Florida, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.
Leger Clinic is a flagship service, which offers a “one stop shop” for all areas of sexual difficulty, either medical or psychological.
