Shauna Paynter Receives BCACC's 2026 Clinical Supervisor Award
Safe & Sound Therapeutics has some proud news to share. Our founder and Clinical Director, Shauna Paynter, has received the 2026 Clinical Supervisor Award from the BC Association of Clinical Counsellors (BCACC), the professional association for Registered Clinical Counsellors in British Columbia. The award was presented on October 2 at the BCACC awards ceremony in Burnaby, just days before World Mental Health Day.
What the award recognizes
Most people never see clinical supervision, but everyone who sits in a counselling session benefits from it. Supervision is the ongoing process in which counsellors bring their client work to an experienced senior clinician for guidance, reflection, ethical oversight, and professional growth. It is one of the quiet foundations of quality mental health care: it protects clients, supports practitioners, and keeps care current, ethical, and effective. The BCACC's Clinical Supervisor Award recognizes excellence in this work across British Columbia.
What this means for you as a client
When you book with a counsellor at Safe & Sound Therapeutics, you are never working with someone who practises in isolation. Our team of nine practitioners works within a structured ecosystem of supervision, consultation, and ongoing professional development, led by an award-winning clinical supervisor. That behind-the-scenes structure shows up in the counselling room. Whether you are seeking support for anxiety, depression, trauma, ADHD, autism, relationship challenges, burnout, or a difficult life transition, it means thoughtful, consistent, neurodiversity-affirming care for children, teens, adults, couples, and families across Kelowna and the Okanagan.
A career spent helping people grow
Shauna came to counselling after 16 years as a high school science and psychology teacher. She founded Safe & Sound Therapeutics 12 years ago and has built it into both a counselling practice and a learning community. Over the past decade she has mentored 21 graduate trainees from four universities, and she provides supervision and consultation to professionals beyond the practice. She is also an approved provider with the Physician Health Program of BC, supporting the wellbeing of practising physicians.Her approach draws on humanistic, person-centred, and relational traditions, with particular attention to the role of the nervous system in therapy and supervision. She is the author of Presence Is the Practice: Therapy, Regulation, Relational Depth, and Ethical Clinical Supervision for Modern Practitioners (2026), written for counsellors and helping professionals.“Clinical supervision is ultimately about supporting the people who support others,” says Shauna. “We built Safe & Sound as an ecosystem, a clinical home where practitioners can put down roots and keep growing. That growth reaches every client and family they serve.”
For our referring partners
For the family physicians, psychiatrists, pediatricians, and school counsellors who refer to us: this recognition reflects the clinical governance behind every referral. Practitioners at Safe & Sound work with ongoing supervision, collaborative case consultation, and quality assurance protocols. The person you refer receives care that is supported, monitored, and ethically grounded.
For practitioners seeking supervision or a clinical home
If you are a Registered Clinical Counsellor, Canadian Certified Counsellor, graduate student, or allied mental health professional looking for clinical supervision in Kelowna, or a practitioner seeking a collegial clinical home where learning continues throughout your career, we would be glad to hear from you. Shauna offers individual and group clinical supervision, and Safe & Sound welcomes practitioners who value mentorship, consultation, and connection.“I’m deeply honoured — and even more inspired by what this represents for our counselling community,” says Shauna. “When we care well for the people who care for others, that care ripples outward into clients, families, and communities.
”Congratulations, Shauna, from all of us at Safe & Sound."
Looking for counselling in Kelowna? Book online
Referring a client or patient? Contact us HERE
Seeking clinical supervision or a practice to call home? Visit our Clinical Supervision PAGE
Want to Join Our Team? Click HERE
