The School Affiliate Program was created to satisfy the training
needs of graduate School Psychology students and the mental health
needs of local schools. The program is a partnership between
several community schools and the Center for Psychological Services
that enables School Psychology graduate students to render services
in affiliate schools, and receive credit towards their practicum
training requirements. By placing mental health professionals
in schools that have a direct link to a University-based outpatient
clinic, the program is able to offer school communities a full
continuum of effective mental health services. The School
Affiliate Program is administered by the Center for Psychological
Services at St. John’s University and has four main purposes:
- To ensure that local schools have access to state-of-the-art
mental health interventions and psychological evaluations through
their collaboration with St. John’s University.
- To provide a challenging and quality internship experience for
5th year School Psychology students at St. John’s.
- To provide graduate School Psychology students with training
experiences in a school setting.
- To assist in bridging the gap that often occurs between school
mental health services and community agencies.
Currently seven schools are participating in the program.
Each school is chosen based on predetermined criteria to ensure
that the forthcoming partnership is comfortable for both involved
parties.
The school-community partnership underlies our programmatic
approach and enables us to offer a continuum of psychological
services. We follow a pyramid approach to treatment
options. This model ensures that “everyone gets something”
regarding mental health services, which helps build a school
culture of respect and positive behaviors. Further, because
“everyone gets something,” services are available to children who
do not have Individualized Educational Plans (IEP), as well as
those who are in special education. More specifically, by
following a pyramid approach to treatment options, it is possible
to service more children in the schools through school-wide and
classroom-wide interventions, and teacher trainings, while
transitioning more serious cases to the Center for Psychological
Services for individual therapy and/or family therapy. The
following services are rendered to schools that are affiliated with
our program: psychoeducational testing, educational evaluations,
behavior evaluations, behavior modification programs,
consultations, and individual and group counseling.
The School Affiliate Program was created by Dr. Renee Clauselle,
who continues to oversee the program. She provides direct
supervision to all interns assigned to affiliate schools and
maintains close relationships with affiliate school
administrators.