Tufts University School Psychology Program and Children's Hospital Neighborhood Partnerships: A High Quality Urban Practice Internship

Key contemporary concerns in urban education today include the educational achievement gap, the over-representation of children of color in special education, and the social/emotional "readiness to learn". The School Psychology Program at Tufts, awarding the Master of Arts and Certificate of Advanced Graduate Study, is committed to preparing practitioners to tackle these crucial concerns in urban settings. This preparation involves developing abilities in relationship building, active collaboration with teachers, cultural competence, and systemic understandings of the impact of racism and poverty on educational outcomes. To put these abilities into practice requires field-based internship opportunities that offer Tufts advanced graduate students high quality supervision and training in urban settings. Such opportunities can be difficult to find given the often very limited, assessment driven role that school psychologists frequently play in urban systems.

The Children's Hospital Neighborhood Partnerships (CHNP) Program is one such opportunity. The goal of this program is to promote children's social, emotional, and behavioral health in order to help all children achieve to the best of their abilities. To accomplish this, the program offers school-based services to partners in the Boston Public Schools that include diagnostic assessments, short-term individual counseling, group counseling, classroom prevention curricula, parent consultation, and staff consultation and training. These partnerships seek to expand access to mental health services for unserved and underserved children and families. Further, to improve the quality and effectiveness of mental health services, the CHNP offers clinical training experiences for masters and doctoral level trainees in school psychology, social work, psychology, and psychiatry.

For the past five years, Tufts has had a total of six third year school psychology students doing internships with the CHNP. The internship has been supported with a stipend jointly offered by Tufts and the CHNP. Without exception, the fit between the CHNP and the training goals of our students, and of our program, has been superb. Our students receive intensive weekly supervision of their work and attend didactic seminars at Children's Hospital every other week over the course of the year. They are thoroughly involved in the life of the school setting while practicing in a comprehensive role in urban schools. Nearly all of these interns have gone on to employment in urban settings that include Lawrence, Lynn, Chicago, and the Bronx.

For more information on the Tufts University School Psychology Program's affiliation with the Children's Hospital Neighborhood Partnerships Program, please visit their website.