ABOUT THE AGENCY AND SETTING

Psychology Doctoral Intern Training Program:

2016-2017 Training Year

Accredited by the American Psychological Association’s Commission on Accreditation

A BOUT THE A GENCY AND S ETTING

Incorporated as a private, nonprofit community clinic in 1946, The Guidance Center has served children, adolescents, and families in the Long Beach metropolitan area continuously for over 60 years. (In 2002 the name was changed from Greater Long Beach Child Guidance Center.) Although the agency has grown considerably over the decades, and now offers a wide range of mental health services from seven locations in four southeast Los Angeles county cities, we continue to be child and family- centered, and treat each child or adolescent within the context of their family, culture, school system, and community.

Located on the coast about 25 miles southeast of downtown Los Angeles, Long Beach is the fourth largest city in California, with a population of 462,257 people (2010 census). In addition to a large outpatient center in north-central Long Beach, the Center has operated a satellite clinic in San Pedro since 1977, and a model interagency “System of Care” program in Compton since 1998. The Center also has provided outpatient

services in Avalon, on Catalina Island, since 2001. The Center is affiliated with Miller Children's Hospital, and has training and service delivery agreements with several of its pediatric ambulatory clinics.

The Guidance Center is a major contract agency, providing outpatient and specialty mental health services for the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, and also works closely with the Long Beach and Paramount Unified School District (providing on-campus mental health services at over 40 schools), and the County Departments of Children and Family Services and Probation. System-wide, over 130 clinicians and interns provide thousands of hours of clinical assessment and treatment services monthly, including diagnosis, crisis intervention, individual, collateral, group, and family psychotherapy, individual and group rehabilitation services, case management, in-home and school-based services, intensive service programs for children and adolescents, psychiatric evaluation and medication services, outpatient substance abuse treatment, and psychological testing. Clients include children from 0 to 18 years and/or parents/caretakers, who are from a broad spectrum of lower and middle-income households, with cognitive, emotional, interpersonal, behavioral, school, and family problems. In terms of ethnicity, Center clientele are approximately 62% Hispanic origin, 24% African-American, 10% Anglo-American, and 2% Pacific Islander.

Multidisciplined clinical staff and interns work closely with parents, school personnel, allied agencies, and other resources to address each child's difficulties in a professional and coordinated manner. All staff clinicians are state licensed, or otherwise qualified mental health professionals, in one of California’s major mental health disciplines. In addition to pre-doctoral psychology training, the Center serves as a training site for MSW and MFT interns and doctoral psychology practicum students from local programs. The agency is licensed by the State Department of Health Services as a Psychology Clinic.

HEADQUARTERS

1301 Pine Avenue

Long Beach, CA 90813

562.595.1159 tel

562.490.9759 fax

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A BOUT THE P SYCHOLOGY I NTERN T RAINING P ROGRAM

B ACKGROUND . The Center has trained psychology interns for over 35 years, but until 1992, training primarily was for half-time interns from two local schools. At that time, the Center had two locations and a total staff size of about 15 clinicians. Since 1992-93, the program has trained full-time interns. The program applied for APA approval during the 1994-95 training year and was successful, earning accreditation initially for 1995 to 2000.

During the last site visit in 2013, the site visitors noted that “Past and present interns were very clear that they feel like colleagues. The support of staff was a universal theme among the listed strengths of the program. The interns report they are well-treated, respected, regarded as colleagues and not subjected to any ethically

questionable behavior on the part of staff.” The APA Commission on Accreditation awarded the maximum seven year accreditation to the program with the next site visit scheduled for 2020.

P HILOSOPHY , G OALS , & O BJECTIVES . The Guidance Center’s mission is to provide comprehensive mental health treatment to our community’s most disadvantaged children and their families struggling with mental illness and abuse, leading them toward a positive and productive future.

The Guidance Center envisions a community where all children have the help they need to be healthy and happy.

Consistent with the agency’s goal, the doctoral psychology internship program’s goal is to provide supervised experience and training that contributes in a significant way to each intern’s competency in the clinical assessment and treatment of child and adolescent emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal disorders, in a multi-disciplinary, outpatient community clinic setting.

To reach the overall training goal stated above, specific programmatic goals have been developed, including:

1. To effectively address and respond to the psychological, psychosocial, and psychobehavioral needs of the youth and families within a community mental health setting.

2. To provide a training experience that successfully integrates for each intern the science and practice of psychology, facilitates transition from theory to practice, and produces broadly competent practitioners.

The specific objectives are enumerated below. Interns would generally be expected to enter internship at the minimal to growing competency level, make progress during internship and achieve full competence in most skill areas and advanced competence in some areas by the end of internship. The nine major competency areas covered by the two overarching training goals: Professionalism, Legal/Ethical, Individual and Cultural Diversity, Integration of Scientific Knowledge and Methods, Psychological Assessment and Diagnosis, Consultation and Interdisciplinary collaboration, Therapeutic Intervention, Crisis Evaluation and Management, Supervision

Goal 1: To effectively address and respond to the psychological, psychosocial, and psychobehavioral needs of the youth and families in a community mental health setting

Objective 1 (Individual and Cultural Diversity Competency): To ensure that interns are able to work effectively with clients from diverse backgrounds, including cultural, religious, and ethnic differences, sexual orientation, disabilities and handicaps, and different socio-economic backgrounds

Goal 2: To provide a training experience that successfully integrates for each intern the science and practice

of psychology, facilitates the transition from theory to practice, and produces broadly competent

practitioners.

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Objective 2 (Professionalism Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate foundational competencies in a broad range of professional domains, including: i) Integrity; ii) Deportment; iii) Accountability; iv) Self-reflection and evaluation; and v) Interpersonal effectiveness

Objective 3 (Legal/Ethical Competency): To graduate interns who have demonstrated a working knowledge of relevant legal, ethical, and other standards of practice issues, and who have exercised their judgment with reference to these issues

Objective 4 (Integration of Scientific Knowledge and Methods Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate knowledge and use of scientific data and methods to directly inform their clinical practice.

Objective 5 (Psychological Assessment and Diagnosis Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate functional competencies in a broad range of professional practice applications, including: assessment and diagnosis of problems

Objective 6 (Consultation and Interdisciplinary Collaboration Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate functional competency in providing expert guidance or professional assistance in response to a client’s needs or goals.

Objective 7 (Therapeutic Intervention Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate functional competencies in designing interventions to alleviate suffering and to promote the health and well-being of individuals, families, and groups

Objective 8 (Crisis Evaluation and Management Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate functional competencies in evaluating and managing crises (e.g., suicidality, homicidality, abuse reporting) effectively.

Evaluation and Management

Objective 9 (Supervision Competency): To graduate interns who demonstrate a working knowledge of the theories and methods of supervision and utilize supervision effectively to promote growth.

T RAINING M ODEL . The Guidance Center Pre-doctoral Psychology Training Program subscribes to the local clinical scientist model (Trierweiler & Stricker, 1995). This approach to community-based treatment has been understood as the resolution of the incompatibility between science and practice and is an approach, which not only recognizes the contributions of science but also encourages the application of this knowledge while accepting the realities of daily clinical practice. The local clinical scientist-training model espoused by The Guidance Center identifies the intern as a clinician functioning as a scientist within a community mental health center. That is to say, as a scientist, the intern/clinician is encouraged to draw upon scientific psychological knowledge and utilize it when relevant and applicable within the local situation. Training and supervision underscores the importance of the uniqueness of the setting and the exchange between the clinician and patient, which may provide natural boundaries or limited applicability to this scientific knowledge. The intern/clinician is therefore encouraged not only to apply this knowledge but to recognize its limitations and applicability.

Trierweiler and Stricker

(1995) propose that there are three ways in which science, as understood by the local clinical scientist model, can contribute to the functioning of the intern/clinician:

1) Conclusions of psychological science may have applicability to the clinician. The intern program supports the use of empirically supported research and interventions in clinical practice. Interns are encouraged to consider various theoretical and research based approaches when developing treatment plans to guide the patient’s course of treatment. Group supervision provides interns an opportunity to refine treatment planning and case conceptualization skills through case presentation. This experience

2Stricker, G., and Trierweiler, S. J., (1995). “The local clinical psychologist: A bridge between science and practice.” American Psychologist, 50, 995-1002.

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offers interns instruction through training and practice to integrate research based treatment approaches as well as information gleaned from assessments and observation.

2) Use of scientific thinking in the clinical setting provides significant value to clinical care. At The Guidance Center, the intern is encouraged to employ critical thinking to formulate hypotheses for their patients’ disposition. Interns are supervised to integrate observation, assessment and scientific

knowledge to conceptualize and guide the interventions they develop when working with children and families.

3) The clinical interaction can be seen as similar to the scientific interaction, and so the factors that impact the integrity of scientific conclusions can inform the clinician who is seeking to justify beliefs and to understand the local interaction. Just as methodological concerns in scientific research can produce inaccurate results, the local clinical scientist may also be vulnerable to drawing inaccurate conclusions regarding a patient’s presenting concerns and diagnosis if the conclusions were based solely on

subjective data and observation. The training of the intern within the local clinical science model facilitates the intern to recognize the methodological variables which may impact the way in which the intern understands and conceptualizes his or her patients and their presenting concerns.

Staff members at all levels of the Center are accustomed to treating psychology interns as capable professionals;

they are given responsibilities and opportunities commensurate with their advanced level of education, training, and skill development. Because advanced clinical training in human services involves issues of quality assurance, supervision and training involves ongoing evaluation of the intern's performance while at the same time providing the freedom, support, and responsibility to grow professionally. Professional growth and development includes integrating the science and practice of psychology, acquiring and demonstrating a broad range of clinical competencies, and transitioning from a student to professional self-awareness.

Interns are included in all Center activities and their input, feedback, and suggestions are responded to and incorporated during program evolution, evaluation, changes, and refinement. Because interns grow and develop through the supervised experience of working with "real life" problems, situations, and families, their services are appropriately billable and result in some revenue generation for the Center. The primary purpose of developing and maintaining an intern training program, however, is to fulfill the Center's mission to provide professional training.

The internship program provides broad and general training to develop well-rounded and competent professional psychologists while also fostering individual growth and learning objectives.

C ORE TRAINING E LEMENTS . All four interns participate in the following core training elements:

 Supervised clinical experience in all aspects of outpatient direct service delivery with children, adolescents, parents, and families. These services include: intakes and assessment; clinical case management; a range of psychotherapeutic interventions and modalities, including implementation of evidence-based interventions; clinical case consultation with other treatment staff, schools, and allied agencies; crisis intervention; and termination planning and discharge. Services are provided in the office, client’s homes, and schools.

 Certification in the Managing and Adapting Program (MAP), an evidenced based program developed by Bruce Chorpita, Ph.D. Certification involves 40 hours of face-to-face training, review and passing of two client portfolios, and consultation/supervision meetings weekly.

 Comprehensive psychological assessment of clinic referred children. Interns complete 6-8 batteries each

year to assist clinicians in answering diagnostic questions about their clients. Assessment include

consultation, brief assessment, comprehensive assessment, and therapeutic assessment. Interns learn a

hypothesis drive approach to psychological assessment and how to provide individualized, specific

feedback and recommendations.

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 Quality improvement research to learn how to utilize community based data to improve or change service delivery. Interns will learn about rapid cycle change and quality improvement models and together will collaborate on a quality improvement project that helps the Center determine treatment effectiveness and quality of care. Interns participate in a plan, do, study, act (PDSA) cycle and present findings to relevant stakeholders (i.e., clinicians, board members, executive team). Past projects included evaluating client response to changes in intake procedures and effectiveness of evidenced based practices with diverse agency clientele.

 Supervision of practicum students to develop supervisory skills. As part of the training to become professional psychologists, interns have the opportunity to supervise psychology practicum students in psychological testing in a group format, participate in supervision didactics, and receive supervision of supervision from the Director of Training.

SUPPLEMENTAL TRAINING TRACKS . Interns are also offered the opportunity to gain exposure and experience by working in supplemental tracks. During orientation interns are introduced to the tracks and asked to rank their preferences. Assignments are year-long and are based on match of experience, interests, and supervisors. Each intern is assigned to one track to supplement training goals and provide an individualized training experience.

Jonathan Jacques Pediatric Oncology: The Jonathan Jaques Children’s Cancer Center (JJCCC) is a clinic that provides assessment and psychosocial support services for pediatric hematology and oncology patients being treated in Miller Children’s Hospital, both as inpatients and outpatients. As these clients are medical/physical patients, and not necessarily mental health clients, this rotation emphasizes neuropsychological testing of inpatients, supportive therapy, outpatient work with families of cancer victims, and a school re-entry program for children who have received chemotherapy. Jonathan Jacques is a multidisciplinary clinic integrating physical medicine, medical social work, and pediatric psychology. Intern participating in the JJCCC Track will:

 Conduct comprehensive neuropsychological assessments of pediatric oncology/hematology outpatients.

Interns will select and administer measures, interpret and conceptualize patient functioning, write integrated reports, and present feedback as indicated.

 Provide short-term supportive psychotherapy to pediatric oncology/hematology inpatients and/or outpatients.

 Provide on-going support to families adjusting to medical diagnoses, grief and loss issues, changes in patient functioning, and difficulties navigating medical systems.

 Participate in planning for patient re-entry into the academic environment via analysis of functional abilities, participation in school re-entry meetings or IEPs, and collaboration with academic treatment teams.

 Consultation with members of multidisciplined treatment team (including psychiatry, medical, social work, behavioral specialists, academic) to coordinate care and assist patents and families in reaching optimal recovery.

Pediatric Rehabilitation Center: The Pediatric Rehabilitation Center is a department at Miller Children’s Hospital, which works closely with other pediatric specialists to coordinate and provide optimal services for children with special needs and their families. After evaluation and assessment, the rehabilitation team is assembled from a variety of disciplines to provide full, medical, therapeutic and educational services. This rotation emphasizes neuropsychological assessment for children with a variety of conditions including brain injury, cerebral palsy, developmental delay, spinal cord injury, brain tumor, and musculoskeletal diseases.

Supportive client and family inpatient services are provided, as well as multidisciplinary school-reentry services

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for client recovering from traumatic brain injuries. Intern participating in the Pediatric Rehabilitation Track will:

 Conduct comprehensive neuropsychological assessments of pediatric rehabilitation outpatients. Interns will select and administer measures, interpret and conceptualize patient functioning, write integrated reports, and present feedback as indicated. Provide short-term supportive psychotherapy to pediatric rehabilitation inpatients and/or outpatients.

 Provide on-going support to families adjusting to medical diagnoses, grief and loss issues, changes in patient functioning, and difficulties navigating medical systems.

 Participate in planning for patient re-entry into the academic environment via analysis of functional abilities, participation in school re-entry meetings or IEPs, and collaboration with academic treatment teams.

 Consultation with members of multidisciplined treatment team (including psychiatry, medical, social work, behavioral specialists, academic) to coordinate care and assist patents and families in reaching optimal recovery.

Stramski Children’s Developmental Center: The Stramski Children's Developmental Center is a special needs center that helps children and families deal with conditions such as autism, cleft lip and palate, birth defects, learning problems, and other developmental delays. The center also has clinics specializing in sleep disorders and international adoption. It is at the forefront of the study of Fragile X Syndrome. Although many of these children's conditions are "invisible," they are often serious and accompanied by a lifetime of challenges. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the center is able to provide individualized care to help children reach their optimum potential. Intern participating in the Stramski Track will:

 Assist in conducting neuropsychological assessments, including exposure to the ADOS-2 and other measures

 Provide short-term supportive psychotherapy to patients or families adjusting to medical diagnoses, changing in patient functioning and difficulties navigating medical systems.

 Consultation with members of multidisciplined treatment team and liaison to provide referrals to patients and family members

Outpatient support groups at Miller Children’s Hospital: After patients are discharged from the hospital, there is on-going need for supportive therapy groups such as bereavement, coping with life changes. The intern in this track will develop and lead six groups throughout the year based on patient need. (Please note, this track is under development.)

S UPERVISION . Each intern works with several supervisors during the course of the training year. All primary, assessment and hospital rotation supervisors are licensed psychologists who have participated in required California Board of Psychology supervision continuing education classes. Other supervisors may be clinical social workers and marriage and family therapists—all of whom provide supervision to interns in the program as part of their job responsibilities.

Per state licensure and APA requirements, interns are provided with a minimum of one hour of supervision for every ten hours worked, which will be at least four hours per week. In addition, two of those hours must be individual, face-to-face supervision hours with a licensed psychologist. The exact nature of the supervision is dependent on several factors: the needs of the intern, variation in style, and the theoretical orientation of the supervisor.

Other than individual and group clinical supervision, interns also participate in a weekly professional issues

supervision led by the Director of Training. The focus of this group supervision is professional development, the

research project and supervision of supervision.

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S EMINARS & I N - SERVICE T RAINING . Several forms of didactic training are presented to psychology interns each month: (1) The Center provides a series of monthly in-service trainings for the clinical staff and all interns on topics and issues pertinent to child, family, community, and clinical service delivery, and for program presentations by allied community agencies with whom we would collaborate; (2) there is a weekly didactic seminar specifically for interns that focuses on assessment and therapy topics; and (3) there are scheduled training opportunities available through the pediatric ambulatory rotation experiences presented at Long Beach Memorial Hospital sites. Psychology interns also attend administrative staff meetings and periodic staff retreats, for the purpose of increasing staff cohesion, mutual appreciation, and stress reduction.

Staff and interns also are encouraged to attend local continuing education conferences and workshops, and the Center provides paid time off and tuition reimbursement for pre-approved outside training. The Center is an APA approved continuing education provider, and also approved by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences to provide continuing education for Licensed Clinical Social Workers and Marriage and Family Therapists.

T YPICAL W ORK W EEK AND E XPECTATIONS . A typical workweek for a psychology intern includes:

Activity Hours per week

Outpatient and Intensive clinical services 10 hours (# of clients varies)

Assessment/Testing 6 hours (1 case; report writing & testing) Supplemental tracks (hospital or schools) 8 hours

Total Clinical Activities Approximately 24 hours per week Individual clinical supervision/MAP 2 hours

Group clinical supervision 2 hours

Assessment supervision 1 hour

Professional Issues Supervision 1 hour

Total Supervision Approximately 6.0 hours per week Didactic Seminars (Assessment, EBPs, etc…) 2 hours

Research Project 2 hours

Meetings 1 hour

Paperwork, Travel, Other 4.0 hours

Provision of Supervision to Practicum Students 1 hours

Total Other 10.0 hours

Total time per week 40 hours

Although the program is preplanned and organized, a degree of flexibility is maintained within the structure in order to meet individual intern objectives and needs for more or less training with, for example, certain diagnostic groups, age ranges, kinds of families, clinical areas of interest, specific treatment modalities or approaches, etc. At the beginning of the year interns review the program's goals, objectives, and competencies expected to be developed and demonstrated during the year, and the program learns from each intern the individual goals and objectives they have for the training year. Progress during the year is measured against both program and intern objectives.

W ORKLOAD E XPECTATIONS . This weekly schedule is approximate and may change based on the needs of the clients and agency. Per APA guidelines, at least 50% of intern time must be in direct service activities (i.e., therapy, testing, school groups). Interns are expected to provide at least 12.5 hours of billable services per week; though, they will not fail internship if this expectation is not met for reasons outside of the intern’s control.

S TIPENDS /B ENEFITS . Stipend amounts for the 2016-2017 training year are expected to be $26,000 but won’t be

final until adoption of that year’s annual budget. Interns who are fluently bilingual in Spanish and English (and pass

a verbal test) will receive an additional $3,500 annual stipend. Interns are offered a choice of two major medical

plans and a dental/vision plan (coverage begins the first day after one-month of employment), are given two

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weeks of paid vacation time (80 hours), one and a half weeks paid sick leave (62 hours), all regular holidays, up to one week (40 hours) paid time off to attend pre-approved conferences/workshops or dissertation-related meetings,

$150 towards continuing education workshop reimbursement, and work-related mileage and mobile phone reimbursements. Interns are able to contribute to the 403b retirement plan.

Interns are provided with offices and have ready access to video taping and audio taping equipment, an observable play room with one-way glass, an observable group/family therapy room, therapy and office supplies, a testing office with computer, secretarial and record-keeping support, and computer access for word processing and DSL Internet access.

CORE TRAINING STAFF

Christina Aguirre-Kolb, LEP, ABSNP, School neuropsychologist, Miller Children’s Hospital, track supervisor Program involvement: supervisor for Stramski Children’s Development Center, mentor

Tiffany Dawson, LMFT, Psy.D. Clinical Supervisor, Intern Primary Supervisor Areas of Interest: Adolescent mental health, trauma

Joseph De Luna, Psy.D., RPT Clinical Supervisor, Intern Primary and Assessment Supervisor

Areas of Interest: Child/adolescent mental health, Play Therapy (specifically experiential play therapy), Trauma, Integration of psychology and spirituality, Gestalt therapy, Parenting, Clinical/psychological assessment

Lisa Fasnacht-Hill, Ph.D. Psychologist, Miller Children’s Hospital, track supervisor Program Involvement: supervisor for Pediatric Rehabilitation Center, mentor

Teddi Softley, Ph.D. Psychologist, Miller Children’s Hospital, track supervisor Program Involvement: supervisor for Jonathan Jacques Cancer Center, mentor

Dawn Vo-Jutabha, Ph.D. Chief Quality Officer, Assessment and Professional Develpoment Supervisor

Areas of interest: Developmentally focused-clinical psychology, supervision training, development of psychology professionals/training, adapting evidence-based treatments for specific populations, and psychological assessment

ADJUNCT TRAINING STAFF

Aseye Allah, LCSW (Spanish-speaking), Clinical Supervisor Program involvement: group supervisor, applicant interviewer

Patricia Costales, LCSW (Spanish-speaking) Executive Director

Program Involvement: Guest lecturer for didactic seminar, applicant interviewer

Oreta Draper, LMFT, Program Manager, San Pedro Clinic

Program Involvement: Managing and Adapting Program (MAP) Trainer, consultant on MAP cases

Salmira Jilanchi, LMFT, Clinical Supervisor

Program Involvement: group supervisor, applicant interviewer

Kristen Martin, LMFT, Ed.D Program Manager, Intensive Services

Program Involvement: Guest lecturer, application reviewer and applicant interviewer

Eduardo Waiskopf, LMFT (Spanish-speaking), Clinical Director

Program Involvement: Guest lecturer for didactic seminar, application reviewer and applicant interviewer, Spanish

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group supervision

Graciela Zisman, LCSW (Spanish-speaking) Program Manager, Long Beach Outpatient Program Program Involvement: application reviewer and applicant interviewer

A PPLICATION I NFORMATION

The 2016-2017 training year will begin Thursday, September 1, 2016, and end Thursday, August 31, 2017. The training year consists of 52 weeks and provides a total of 2,000 supervised pre-doctoral hours towards licensure.

In order for your application to be considered, you must have:

1) completed all coursework for a doctorate in psychology from an APA-approved clinical or counseling psychology program

2) a majority of clinical practicum (therapy and testing) and other relevant experiences with children, adolescents, and/or families, and

3) a minimum of 400 combined direct intervention and assessment hours

*The program is primarily a clinical psychology training program, and is limited to doctoral candidates who have a one-year full-time internship as a part of their degree requirements. Applicants who have a doctorate in a related field and are seeking an internship to re-specialize will need to be enrolled in a qualifying clinical retraining program.

The ideal applicant will also have:

1) a commitment to serving the underserved,

2) a passion for working in community mental health,

3) made significant progress toward completing their dissertation requirement (at least data collected), 4) flexibility and openness to working with clients in any setting,

5) the ability to work under pressure and multi-task,

6) the capability to work with and learn from multidisciplinary professional staff, 7) a willingness to experience different treatment modalities, and

8) an interest in community based research

Multicultural and bilingual applicants are encouraged to apply, as Los Angeles County and the greater Long Beach region are areas of great ethnic and cultural diversity, and the Center strives to maintain staff at all levels with diversity and multicultural competency.

The Center only accepts the standardized application form developed by the Association of Postdoctoral and Psychology Internship Centers (APPIC). The APPIC Application for Psychology Internship (AAPI) is designed to be completed on a computer. The Guidance Center Psychology Intern program agrees to abide by the APPIC policy that no person at this training facility will solicit, accept or use any ranking related information from any intern applicant.

To apply for the Center's doctoral psychology intern training program:

1. Utilizing the AAPI Portal (portal.appicas.org), submit a signed and completed application by

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November 7, 2015 at 5:00PM Pacific Standard Time.

2. If you are invited for an interview, you will be asked to bring a de-identified comprehensive psychological testing/assessment report (including cognitive, socio-emotional, neuropsychological, adaptive behavioral, and/or personality domains) reflective of your current assessment expertise and experience.

3. Applicants are strongly encouraged to detail training in, use of, and certification in any Evidence-Based Practices such as TFCBT, MAP, PCIT, CPP, or IPT.

4. In the cover letter, please specify the unique reason(s) for applying to this particular internship program and how your previous experiences are a good fit for our program. Please tell us which aspects of the program or agency set us apart from other community mental health internship programs and what specifically prompted you to apply to our program.

5. Arrange for three letters of recommendation from knowledgeable sources other than your academic program's Director of Training (DOT). The DOT may, of course, send a letter of recommendation, but it should be in addition to the other three requested letters. It is recommended that at least two of the letters be from clinical supervisors. Letters should also be submitted using the AAPI Portal and the required standardized format.

Please note: Due to agency insurance policies and DMV requirements, and because interns are expected to deliver mental health services in the field (requiring driving), interns who match with The Guidance Center must obtain a valid California driver’s license prior to the start of the intern training year. Further, to ensure that safe driving is a priority, interns must maintain the following: a valid drivers license that is neither suspended nor expired; have no more than 3 minor driving violations and/or accidents combined within the last 3 years; no major driving violations within the last 5 years. Interns must also have sufficient vehicle insurance coverage and pass a background/fingerprinting check. Interns who are placed in the Miller Children’s Hospital tracks must also pass the hospital required drug screening.

Because of the number of applications received, questions that are not answered by the above material can best be communicated by e-mail to Dawn Vo-Jutabha, Ph.D., Director of Training at [email protected]. Please do not call.

The program’s policies and procedures manual is available upon request.

The program is accredited by the Commission on Accreditation of the American Psychological Association. Any questions related to the program’s accredited status should be directed to the Commission on Accreditation:

Office of Program Consultation and Accreditation American Psychological Association

750 1

Street, NE Washington, DC 20002

Phone: (202) 336-5979/Email: [email protected] Web: www.apa.org/ed/accreditation

I NTERVIEWS & S ELECTION

After a careful review of the application provided by each applicant, approximately the top quarter of qualified

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applicants will be invited to attend an informational open house and participate in an individual, in-person or telephone interview with the Director of Training and supervising faculty. Two open houses will be offered in early and mid-January with the one-hour interviews to follow. Out of town applicants will be given priority in scheduling their interviews the same day as the open house. Current psychology interns also will be available to meet with or talk to each applicant interviewed to answer questions and/or further explain the program. Applicants who live out of the area are not required to travel for in-person interviews; applicants who interview by telephone are not placed at a disadvantage. An effort will be made to notify each applicant by December 15, 2015 regarding his or her status during review.

In accordance with the membership requirements of APPIC, a rank-ordered list of applicants who were interviewed by telephone or in person will be submitted during February 2016, to National Matching Services, Inc., who will computer-match applicants with sites. Results of the match will be released on APPIC Match Day, also during February 2016. Applicants will need to be registered with and submit a rank-ordered list of sites to the matching service. Further information regarding the matching program can be obtained from your school or academic Director of Training, or from the matching service website, www.natmatch.com/psychint (lower case only). See also the latest version of APPIC Match Policies and other relevant information available from APPIC at www.appic.org.

"This internship site agrees to abide by the APPIC policy that no person at this training facility will solicit, accept

or use any ranking-related information from any intern applicant."