Owned and operated by a school psychologist, WBES has expanded to provide educational consultation and staffing solutions for various services, training, and clinical support throughout New Hampshire. Our team consists of over 25 school psychologists and 50 related service providers in New Hampshire. WBES has a main office in Bedford, New Hampshire, where administrative tasks, training, and supervision occur. Our team members have diverse clinical backgrounds, including psychologists, school psychologists, clinical specialists, and special educators. We have trained Master’s and Doctoral-level school psychology and counseling students, including interns and post-doctoral psychologists.
The program represents a collaborative effort between WBES and New Hampshire school districts to provide a range of clinical and didactic training experiences. With its mission to train and prepare interns for independent practice and to meet state requirements for licensure or certification as a psychologist and health service provider, the program’s training goals are intended to support and develop the next generation of leaders in the profession. The program aims to provide supervised experiential learning opportunities for delivering comprehensive school psychological services. The program is designed to assist interns in becoming independent and professional psychologists who can provide various psychological services to improve children and adolescents' mental health and educational outcomes within and outside the school setting.
The training program is a full-time experience beginning in August and ending in June of the following year. Orientation takes place the last week of August at the WBES office, a hub for didactic training and administrative processes. Placed in a New Hampshire school district, interns complete a minimum of 1,500 supervised hours and average 15-20 hours of direct face-to-face clinical hours per week. Interns spend 35 hours per week in the school setting and a minimum of 4 hours a week at the WBES office, where they receive direct supervision with a licensed psychologist, group supervision, didactic training, and protected time to meet with members of their cohort. Interns follow a successive training schedule as they assume increased responsibility and independence in specialized assessment and consultation activities. Additional experiential learning and reflective practice opportunities are woven throughout training.
Supervision focuses on clinical skills development and addressing issues such as professionalism, ethics, and diversity. The program is organized in a way that provides interns with an opportunity not only to combine all their previously learned skills and knowledge in a professional service delivery system but also to apply these skills, under supervision, to benefit those they serve.