The mission of the UNFCC Psychology Internship Program is to provide the training necessary to facilitate the transitional process from graduate student to professional psychologist. The internship has several additional aims:
- To assist interns in developing skills in effectively conceptualizing and implementing psychotherapeutic treatment informed by empirical knowledge.
- To develop skills in providing useful consultation and interfacing productively with treatment team and other professionals.
- To help interns refine their professional identity as a psychologist.
- To model for and assist interns in their development as scientifically informed practitioners.
- To provide interns with a thorough foundation in the basic skills of psychological assessment.
As outlined by the APA Standards of Accreditation, interns who graduate from the internship program must meet certain profession-wide competencies. The program is designed to prepare interns to meet these competencies, through related training and service delivery activities. The competencies include research; ethical/legal standards; individual and cultural diversity, professional values, attitudes, and behaviors; communication and interpersonal skills; assessment; intervention; supervision; and consultation and interprofessional/interdisciplinary skills.
The program adheres to a practitioner-scholar model of training, which emphasizes service delivery based on the integration of scientific principles, research, clinical judgement, and client values. Training is also oriented toward the cultivation of evidence-based practice. Internship is viewed as a unique period of professional transition, in which interns graduate from students to emerging professionals. Interns are gradually given more autonomy and independence, in alignment with their degree of competency and developmental level. With that autonomy comes greater responsibility and increasingly challenging opportunities that require them to “rise to the occasion” as a professional. At the same time, we recognize that interns are still trainees and not yet fully established as professionals. Opportunities for development must be scaffolded according to their skills, knowledge, and competencies, and must occur within a supervised and supportive learning environment.
This period of immense growth can also come with significant weight. Throughout their internship year, interns prepare to leave one chapter of their lives and enter another, and while such transition is exciting, it can also be daunting. We aim to surround the inherent challenges of the internship year with support and care, not only for the interns as clinicians, but also as people, each of whom is deserving of respect, dignity, and compassion. We encourage an appreciation of their unique strengths while addressing their growth edges. We aim to model and to help them cultivate a growth-oriented practice characterized by a commitment to excellence, integrity, authenticity, and reflective practice. Upon graduation, we encourage they take this foundation with them, with the belief that such a practice will support them as they take on bigger challenges in the coming stages of their career.
We believe that knowledge and awareness of oneself is essential to the professional development and competency of mental health professionals. As such, we value self-reflection, authenticity, and curiosity in our practice as well as in our interns. Training staff are responsible for modeling such awareness and use of self and creating a safe environment in which reflection and disclosure on the interns’ part is accessible and supported.