Washington · Supervisors

What Washington Requires an Approved Supervisor to Document, Keep, and Declare

Last updated August 7, 2026

Washington writes its supervision rules in one place for all three disciplines. Whether you supervise a social worker associate (LSWAIC), a mental health counselor associate (LMHCA), or a marriage and family therapist associate (LMFTA), the same chapter of the Washington Administrative Code applies — WAC 246-809 — and the same section, WAC 246-809-020, sets the supervision standards. What changes by discipline is the approved-supervisor rule behind you (246-809-334 for social work, 246-809-134 for marriage and family therapy, 246-809-234 for mental health counseling) and the form your discipline uses. This page is what those rules require you to document, keep, and hand over — with the rule numbers, so you can check every line.

The honest headline is that Washington asks for less paper than Oregon or Florida, on the page. There is no board-issued supervision log, no periodic report, and no stated retention period. But three obligations have real teeth — one before supervision starts, one that runs the whole time, and one at the end that quietly depends on the middle one.

Before supervision starts: the declaration

Each of the three approved-supervisor rules carries the same subsection (3). The social work version, WAC 246-809-334(3), reads: "Before beginning supervision, the approved supervisor must provide the licensure candidate with a declaration that the supervisor has met the requirements of WAC 246-809-334 and qualifies as an approved supervisor. The declaration must be on a form provided by the department."

The department's forms, one per discipline:

• DOH 670-091 — Approved Supervisor Declaration for Licensed Social Worker Candidates (WAC 246-809-334)
• DOH 670-099 — Approved Supervisor Declaration for Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist Candidates (WAC 246-809-134)
• DOH 670-104 — Approved Supervisor Verification, Mental Health Counselor Associate (WAC 246-809-234)

Two details are easy to get backwards. First, the declaration goes to the candidate, not to the Department of Health — the rule's words are "provide the licensure candidate." Your supervisee is the one who needs it in their file. Second, the timing is "before beginning supervision," so a declaration signed six months into the relationship is not what the rule describes. Two of the three forms (DOH 670-091 and 670-099) note the declaration applies to supervision gained in Washington State; the mental health counselor form (DOH 670-104) carries no such scoping language.

What you attest on that form tracks the rule's subsection (4): a minimum of fifteen clock hours of training in clinical supervision (a supervision course, continuing education on supervision, or supervision of supervision — the marriage and family therapist rule, WAC 246-809-134, is the one whose text also allows "any combination of these"), plus twenty-five hours of experience in supervision of clinical practice. From there the three rules diverge in ways that matter if you supervise across disciplines:

• Social work adds an experience floor. WAC 246-809-334(4)(c) also requires two years of clinical experience post-licensure. Neither of the other two rules has this clause.
• Marriage and family therapy accepts AAMFT designation. Under 246-809-134(4)(c), an AAMFT Approved Supervisor "meets the qualifications of this subsection." The mental health counselor and social work rules name no such equivalence.
• All three carry the same relationship bars: you cannot be a blood or legal relative or cohabitant of the candidate, the candidate's peer, or someone who treated the candidate within the past two years. And all three exempt candidates whose supervised experience began before September 30, 2006 from the training-and-experience requirements — a clause that, two decades on, almost never applies.

Subsection (5) of each rule adds an attestation that you have (or will gain) thorough knowledge of the candidate's practice activities: their practice setting, their recordkeeping as outlined in WAC 246-809-035, their financial management, the ethics of their clinical practice, and their backup plan for client coverage when they are unavailable. That list is worth reading as a job description — it is the scope of what the department considers you to be vouching for.

While supervision runs: one sentence, and what it has to support

The documentation duty itself is WAC 246-809-020(3)(e). The approved supervisor shall "maintain documentation of supervision provided." That is the entire sentence. No format, no template, no retention period, no deadline for producing it to anyone.

It would be easy to read that as permission to keep almost nothing. Before you do, look at what the rest of the section makes that documentation answer for:

• The frequency floor is proportional. WAC 246-809-020(2)(b) requires "regular supervision, meeting at least one hour for every 80 hours of the licensure candidate's clinical practice time." There is no fixed monthly count — the floor moves with your supervisee's practice volume. Whether you are meeting it is an arithmetic question, and only a record that tracks both sides of the ratio can answer it.
• Both of you must name the relationship in public. (2)(a) requires "both the approved supervisor and the licensure candidate" to communicate the nature of the supervisory relationship to the public, other professionals, and all clients served, consistent with WAC 246-809-710(2) — the disclosure form every associate must give clients at first contact. This one binds the two of you jointly, not you alone.
• Pending-credential supervisees need pre-clearance. If your supervisee is practicing on a pending associate credential, (2)(c) requires you to review any assessment or diagnosis they make and to agree with it before it is provided to the patient. For that window, your documentation is the evidence the review happened when it had to.
• The rule prescribes the conversation. (2)(d) lists what supervision must discuss: the services the candidate provides, caseload and treatment plans, theory and practice, relevant Washington laws and rules, standards of practice, coordination with other professionals, and relevant literature and research.
• If you stop qualifying, you must say so immediately. (3)(a) requires a supervisor who no longer meets the supervisor qualifications to "immediately notify licensure candidates under their supervision." A restriction on your license starts that clock.

At the end: the verification you certify

Washington has no periodic reporting. Nothing is filed with the Department of Health during the supervised-experience period; hours are verified once, when your supervisee applies for the full license, on the discipline's verification form — DOH 670-011 (social work), DOH 670-128 (mental health counseling), or DOH 670-005 (marriage and family therapy). One form per supervisor, per practice setting, signed by you under a certification statement.

This is where the open-ended documentation duty acquires a shape after all. The social work form asks you to certify the supervision dates and five hour figures — direct client contact, one-on-one supervision, group supervision, other hours, and the total — for your candidate, in that setting. The counseling and marriage-and-family forms ask for their disciplines' own splits (immediate supervision and direct counseling; one-on-one and group). You may be signing that form years after the sessions it describes, for a supervisee who has moved through three practice settings, alongside forms from their other supervisors that your numbers should not contradict.

So the practical standard for "documentation of supervision provided" is not in the rule; it is in the form you will eventually sign. A dated, per-candidate record that carries session length, one-on-one versus group, and the setting it happened in, kept as you go, produces those certified totals on demand. A calendar and goodwill do not.

A careful note about retention

We enumerated chapter 246-809 and found no rule attaching a retention period to the supervisor's own supervision documentation — the duty in WAC 246-809-020(3)(e) is open-ended. The one retention figure in the chapter belongs to a different set of documents: WAC 246-809-035(4) requires client records to be kept for five years following the last visit, and it names "the licensed counselor or associate or the associate's supervisor" as parties who can hold that duty — so a supervisor can end up responsible for a supervisee's client records, on that five-year clock, particularly where a practice closes or a supervisee leaves. Do not transplant the five-year figure onto supervision records; do not read its absence as license to discard them either. The verification form is the floor: the record has to survive at least until the last supervisee you certified is licensed, and a supervisor with any appetite for margin keeps it longer.

The whole thing on one page

What this means for how you keep records

Washington gives a supervisor almost no prescribed paperwork between the declaration at the start and the verification at the end — and that gap is exactly where supervisors get caught. There is no six-month report forcing the two of you to reconcile numbers, so the first time anyone official reads your totals may be years after the sessions they describe. If your record and your supervisee's disagree at that point, there is no contemporaneous board filing to arbitrate between them.

The record that survives that test is boring and specific: per supervisee, per practice setting, dated per session, with length, one-on-one or group, and enough of the (2)(d) discussion topics noted to show the supervision the rule describes actually happened. Keep it as you go, reconcile it with your supervisee's own tally at a regular interval, and the verification form becomes transcription instead of archaeology. One more habit worth borrowing from the stricter states: agree with your supervisee, in writing, on the day supervision ends — because "the last day of supervision" is a date you will both be asked for, and it is the easiest fact in the whole file to lose.

This guide is informational, not legal advice. Licensure rules change — always verify current requirements with your board before making decisions about your supervision plan, and flag any discrepancies to support@almostlicensed.com so we can fix them.