Counseling Center

The Training Program:

Competency Areas

Legal and Ethical Issues

Interns are expected to know and apply the professional ethical principles and mental health and legal statutes governing the practice of psychology in the State of Illinois. This is supported by individual consultation with Center staff, and by presentations and discussions in the weekly Clinical and Professional Issues Seminar. Presentation of seminar topics involves various members of the senior staff, depending on their areas of expertise.

Professional Behavior

This competency area includes awareness of professional issues, capacity for self-direction, professional identity, effective interpersonal functioning as a staff member, and contribution to maintenance of agency records and evaluation and accountability data. The development of this competency area is also supported through consultation with all training staff and through presentations in Clinical and Professional Issues Seminar.

Individual Psychotherapy

Interns provide 14-16 hours/week of individual therapy. The intern's individual caseload will represent a wide range of diversity both in presenting issues and in client demographic characteristics. While we have a 15-session limit for most individual cases, interns may designate up to 50% of their caseload for longer-term therapy. Training for this competency includes 3 hours a week of individual supervision and presentations in Clinical and Professional Issues Seminar.

Group Psychotherapy

Interns will co-facilitate a process-oriented psychotherapy group or a skills-based group with a senior staff member or another intern or practicum student. The groups begin early in the fall semester and continue through the spring semester. Process-oriented groups that are offered include general co-ed, body image, and GLBQ. The skills-based group is a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Skills Group. The senior staff co-facilitator provides supervision, or if two interns are co-leading, a senior staff member will supervise.

Clinical Assessment

This competency includes three components: one hour per week of intake interviewing, four hours per week of crisis coverage, and active participation in the weekly Clinical Assessment Seminar during the first few weeks of the semester. The Chief Psychologist and other senior staff members will provide consultation and facilitate the seminar.

Providing Supervision

Interns will supervise one practicum student each semester of the regular academic year. A two-hour weekly Supervision Seminar supports this activity.

Community Intervention

This area involves demonstrating knowledge of the process of designing, implementing and evaluating community interventions within the university environment. By serving as liaisons to the University Housing staff throughout the year and serving on community intervention teams within the Counseling Center, interns will gain experience in providing consultation and community-based interventions as they pertain to issues of mental health, diversity and social justice/advocacy. These activities are coordinated by Dr. Joy.

Diversity/Social Justice

The Counseling Center values multicultural understanding and social justice advocacy in all aspects of psychological practice. Therefore, the interns and training staff are expected and encouraged to engage in social justice issues through advocacy for clients and through community involvement. The interns and training staff are challenged and supported to further develop their knowledge and self-awareness regarding world view, power, privilege, oppression, and social justice. This compentency is supported through the Diversity and Social Justice Seminar; ongoing supervision of individual, group, and supervision of supervision; the infusion of diversity into topics presented in the Clinical and Professional Issues Seminar, and the Counseling Center's yearly goals for Community Intervention.

Receiving Supervision

More than anything else, we are looking for interns who have a genuine desire to learn and grow on internship. This competency area centers on professional behavior in supervisory activities, motivation for learning, awareness of strengths and limitations, capacity for self-supervision, openness to feedback and exploration of issues, and a capacity to be appropriately assertive with supervisors.

The 2002 APA Ethics Code addresses “Student Disclosure of Personal Information within Training and Supervision”. The Training Staff at the SIUC Counseling Center want to clarify our position regarding self disclosure within supervision. We believe that the clinician uses him or herself as a therapeutic tool. Therefore, we place a high value on trainees’ self-awareness regarding their own belief system, values, needs, limitations and the effect of these on their professional performance. Our experience is that when interns are engaged in the process of supervision, they often choose to share self-reflections with the clinical supervisor. This process can generate conversations within supervision regarding personal reactions toward clients and also counter therapeutic/counter transference reactions. As the intern engages in this process of self-exploration, he or she may choose to share personal or historical information as it relates to his/her clinical work. Similarly, if a supervisor observes an intern having difficulty or having strong emotional reactions toward a particular client, a supervisor may inquire about the intern’s experience with that client. These conversations may also lead to an intern’s disclosure of personal or historical information. Interns will find that such conversations occur within the natural rhythm of supervision and are always clearly tied to the intern’s clinical work or professional functioning.

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