School psychology doctoral students could soon have access to more APA-accredited school-based internships to choose from, thanks to a grant program launched last year by APA's Div. 16 (School Psychology).
The Grant Program for School Psychology Internshipsopens in new window provides seed money to develop partnerships between universities and school-based internship programs that will eventually seek Association of Psychology Postdoctoral and Internship Centers (APPIC) membership and APA accreditation. It awarded its first seven grants — of up to $10,000 each — in March (see sidebar).
Div. 16 developed the program with additional funding from the National Association of School Psychologists, the Council of Directors of School Psychology and the Trainers of School Psychologists.
The goal is to help address a lack of APA-accredited school-based internships for school psychology doctoral students, says Tammy Hughes, PhD, a school psychology professor at Duquesne University and a member of APA's Council of Representatives for Div. 16.
"Working in a school building under the legal constraints around general and special education are very unique," Hughes says. "You won't get that same experience in an internship housed only at a hospital, prison or other community mental health agency."
Increasing the number of APA-accredited school-based internships will also allow more school psychology students to pursue licensure, which is important down the line if psychologists want to work outside the schools.
Most school psychologists currently work in K–12 school settings, which typically requires that the psychologist only gain state certification or licensure as a school psychologist, not a license to practice independent psychology. But getting a professional psychology license provides school psychologists with more career flexibility, says Ara Schmitt, PhD, who directs the school psychology program at Duquesne University.
"If you ever want to obtain a license to practice psychology outside of the schools, you have to have a licensed doctoral supervisor for internship, and that's what's lacking in most school-based psychology internships today," Schmitt says.
Teaming up for students
In particular, the grant program wants applications from university-school district partnerships since they provide a team approach to addressing the internship shortage for school psychology students, says Linda Reddy, PhD, past president of Div. 16, who proposed and launched the grant program during her presidency.
She sees such partnerships as important since psychologists in higher education are already experts in demonstrating quality, and are familiar with how to perform self-studies and collect data on student outcomes — key factors when pursuing APPIC membership and APA accreditation.
"When you incorporate that type of skill level with the school district trainers and administration, it makes for a winning team and substantially increases the probability of APPIC approval and APA accreditation," Reddy says.
The grants are designed to cover expenditures such as APPIC membership application and National Match fees, consortium fees and expenses such as meetings with collaborative school districts and the consultation costs involved in generating written plans. In addition, the grant program provides guidance on how to access free consultation services with APA and other national organizations and outlets for federal funding through grant competition.
"We're really trying to get people in the very early stages of developing these internships," Reddy says. "Other APA grants are available to help programs that are further along in the accreditation process."
One of this year's grantees is the Boston Schools Internship program, a collaboration being developed among the University of Massachusetts Boston, William James College, Boston Public Schools and Boston Children's Hospital. Led by Melissa Pearrow, PhD, a school psychology professor at the University of Massachusetts Boston, the team used its grant money to hire consultants to help evaluate plans for building a consortium that bridges school, community clinic and hospital internships placements.
"We've found that there's such a profound need for school-based placements because there's so much prevention and early intervention work available there," Pearrow says. She specifically highlights the need for working with teachers, families and kids before problems begin, in an effort to avoid the need for more intensive services. "That's really different from the opportunities in clinic-based programs."
Hughes also notes that a unique feature of school psychology training is the delivery of services to prevent child difficulties before symptoms result in impaired or disordered academic or behavioral performance.
In addition, Pearrow says, not having APA-accredited internships is undermining students' ability to gain licensure, "and these are critical things for our professional identities and access."
Learning by example
Along with financial backing, Pearrow and her team are also being mentored by psychologists who are already running successful school-based internship consortiums. For example, Schmitt, who is one of the mentors, teamed with psychologist Sally Hoover, PhD, pupil services director for the Quaker Valley School District just outside of Pittsburgh, to form the Pittsburgh Psychology Internship Consortium. This consortium enrolled interns for a third year in August and received APPIC approval last year. The consortium provides slots for five school-based interns and plans to pursue APA accreditation in the coming years.
An even greater internship success story is the Illinois School Psychology Internship Consortiumopens in new window (ISPIC), which has provided nearly 200 APA-accredited school-based psychology internships for students from approximately 50 universities since 2002. Its four partners are the school psychology programs of Illinois State University, Loyola University at Chicago, Northern Illinois University and The Chicago School of Professional Psychology. This consortium was developed after the training programs noticed that most of their school psychology doctoral students who wanted to be licensed were leaving the state to complete internships, says Brenda Huber, PhD, ISPIC's training director and another mentor. The consortium began with two interns in 2002, and this fall, it is providing school-based internships throughout the state for 26 school psychology doctoral students. Most of the consortium's graduates continue to work at least part-time in schools, though many also work in private practice, clinic or hospital settings and academia, according to Huber. Several have also gone on to work with their schools to join the consortium.
Before ISPIC started, there were few licensed school psychologists in Illinois, and they were mostly in affluent suburbs, Huber recalls. "Now they're everywhere and they're bringing best practices to underserved communities and really changing the quality of education and mental health services available to children across the state," she says.