BEXAR COUNTY JUVENILE PROBATION
DEPARTMENT
Mental Health Assessment & Triage Unit
PSYCHOLOGY PRE-DOCTORAL RESIDENCY BROCHURE
Training Details: The Mental Health Assessment and Triage Unit's (MHAT's) Psychology Residency program offers a 12 month, 2000 hour organized training program for qualified doctoral students in professional psychology in a juvenile probation setting. The overall goals of this training program are to provide supervised training and expertise to pre-doctoral psychology residents in the areas of: psychological assessment, consultation, individual, family, and group psychotherapy with particular focus on an adolescent, juvenile probation population. Residents will spend about 50 percent of their time conducting, scoring, and writing up psychological evaluations with youth who have been ordered into residential placement. The other 50 percent of their time is spent co-facilitating 1-3 weekly short-term theme, process, and experiential groups and carrying a weekly individual/family caseload of between 2-4 cases. Residents will be expected to develop skills in each of these clinical areas at the level established in the 1997 APA Guidelines for Residency Training. As a result of their clinical activities Residents provide a minimum of ten (10) direct, face-to-face clinical contact hours to probationers. A minimum of three (3) hours of direct face-to-face supervision is provided weekly, and a weekly 2-hour didactic seminar is held to provide Residents with structured training experience and an opportunity to interact with the other each other and other trainees (local practicum students). In addition, there are times set aside for staff meetings, seminars, and training workshops.
Program Description: The Bexar County Juvenile Probation Department complex is located just south of downtown San Antonio, Texas and has several field units and facilities throughout the San Antonio area. As a unit within the Mental Health Services Division, the Mental Health Assessment & Triage (MHAT) Unit receives referrals from two juvenile courts and probation officers from all areas of the Department. This referral process is designed to help the court officials, probation officers, and future treatment personnel better understand the emotional, psychological needs of these adolescents and the familial/environmental issues that impact these needs. The probation population from which referrals are made have the following characteristics: between the ages of 11 and 17, predominantly male (67% male, 33 % female), predominantly Hispanic, moderate to severe familial stress and dysfunction, frequently learning disordered, oppositional-defiant, moderate to severe behavior problems, often gang-affiliated, substance abusing, and often a history of neglect, physical, emotional, or sexual abuse.
Referrals to MHAT result in one of four different services:
- Psychological testing – typically provided to adolescents that have severe emotional, behavior, and psychological issues and will likely be placed in one of a variety of residential treatment facilities that provide contract care to the Probation Department;
- Psychodiagnostic interview – provided to adolescents who appear to have mental health, and family relational issues that have been largely unassessed;
- Consultation – provided when the adolescents' file contains enough relevant information to provide useful verbal recommendations to the probation officer regarding how to best interact with the adolescent and what services might be most beneficial to his/her remediation, and;
- Therapy services that will involve short- and long-term individual and family therapy, and process and structured psychotherapy groups that center around themes such as sexuality, relationships, stress management, substance abuse, and effective coping skills.
All these services will be conducted with adolescents involved in the various units across the department. Residents rotate monthly between consultation services, the ROPES Challenge Program, and the Weekend Program. Consultation services include working with probation officers for diagnostic clarification, providing recommendations for youth, conducting structured interviews with youth (when deemed appropriate), and writing up summaries for probation officers. The ROPES Program offers the opportunity for Residents to participate in high and low element skill building activities with youth on an outdoor course and co-facilitate process groups based on experiential activities. The Weekend Program is a new program designed to deter youth from residential placement. The Resident working with the Weekend Program will co-facilitate themed, process, and structured groups, with the expectation of leading groups independently through the course of the year. During the Weekend Program rotation, the Resident will work 4 consecutive Saturdays.
The MHAT unit is also a training site for up to 2 practicum students from local graduate psychology programs, which also makes supervision a possible training experience for Residents. Residents will be supervised predominantly by the Unit Manager/Training Director, the Unit Staff Psychologist, and the Director of Mental Health Services. Residents will also have access to one other fully licensed psychologist, several Licensed Professional Counselors, and a Licensed Clinical Social Worker via training seminars and modeling in the skills of diagnosis, psychological testing, and treatment.
Through the course of their various duties Residents will have the opportunity to become knowledgeable about the juvenile justice system and how juvenile offenders move through the Department's various court, field, gang, and specialized (e.g., substance abuse, and sex offender) probation units, as well as its intensive clinical services and day treatment units, and the department's residential correctional facility (Cyndi T. Krier Juvenile Correctional Treatment Center). The opportunity to appear and testify at juvenile justice court proceedings will also be available to the unit's Residents. Residents periodically also have the opportunity to develop and deliver department-wide training seminars, participate in program development and evaluation, and research.
Throughout the training year Residents are challenged to refine their theoretical knowledge, hone report writing and therapy skills, and broaden their consultation skills via contact with staff psychologists and other mental health, health-related, probation and legal professionals. Through their work with supervisors and staff, Residents gain knowledge and experience in different theoretical orientations, approaches, and assessment and treatment models. Finally, the training program prepares Residents to deal with a wide variety of clinical and professional situations they will encounter as professionals working with at-risk adolescents and juvenile probationers.
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.
- A cover letter highlighting relevant course and practical experience and why you believe you would be a good fit at our training site;
- Your curriculum vita;
- Your transcript;
- A psychological assessment report (preferred), or a clinical/intake interview report you have completed that includes conceptualization/formulation, diagnosis, and recommendations. Please alter/eliminate all identifying information for the sake of confidentiality;
- 2 letters of recommendations in addition to another from your training director (3 total).
- Please view http://www.appic.org for complete Match policies and AAPI requirements.
A completed application will include the following documents:
E-mail confirmation will be sent upon receipt of complete packets. Please don't send application materials via multiple mailings, as this will delay application processing. Applicants invited to interview (on-site or phone) will also be asked to provide transcripts. BCJPD is an Equal Opportunity Employer.