Pre-Master’s Mental Health Internship – Oakland

We are committed to nurturing and integrating diversity training into all aspects of our training program by:

Providing interns with opportunities to work with patients who represent various aspects of diversity, including age, religion, gender, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, values, and lifestyle.

Placing a high value on interns’ willingness to engage in self-reflection, and supporting the exploration of attitudes, beliefs and therapeutic postures that could impact clinical interactions.

Maintaining a consistent focus in clinical supervision on expanding interns’ multicultural awareness and competence in the provision of psychotherapeutic services and cultivating a sense of inclusion and belonging in the workplace.

The Regional Mental Health Training Program offers the opportunity to participate various meetings and seminars based on the number of days a trainee work per week and the meetings scheduled on those days.

Interns have access to seminars offered through the EID weekly case consultation where issues related to Equity, Inclusion, and Diversity are discussed.

Interns will attend didactic seminars within their clinics and have opportunity to attend regional seminars organized by Mental Health Training Programs as their schedules permit. Didactics will cover a range of clinical and professional development topics as well as explore culturally responsive care. Interns will have access to both live and asynchronous exposure to various speakers and topics which are designed to meet their developmental needs over the course of the training year.

Bilingual Spanish Adult Track

Interns will participate on all or part of the following meetings (Depending on number of hours and days trainee is working per week):

• Weekly Staff Meetings
• Weekly La Clinica Meeting (Meeting where Spanish Speaking Clinicians and Psychiatrists provide support to each other and present cases)
• Bilingual Case Presentation (Meeting where clinicians present cases to receive support)
• Case Presentation (English) with a multidisciplinary team
• Regional Seminars organized by the Regional Training Department on various topics
• Weekly FIC meetings where issues related to Therapeutic Alliance and Treatment Planning are discussed

Bereavement Track

The intern would attend:

• Weekly Hospice Department staff huddle
• Monthly bereavement department case consultations
• Weekly trauma consult hour offered through MHTP (attendance encouraged)
• Opportunities to view recorded trainings from Regional MHTP’s continuing education lecture library if the intern’s workdays do not coincide with days that live training seminars are scheduled

All interns are supervised by licensed master’s level mental health professionals who are responsible for overseeing the direct delivery of clinical services. The supervisor takes a role in developing the intern’s learning plan, monitoring their progress, and evaluating their training schedule. The supervisor is also responsible for completing the intern’s evaluation.

Bilingual Spanish Adult Track

Individual supervision is offered in Spanish, for 1 hour, on a weekly basis

Group supervision is offered every week for 2 hours in English

Bereavement Track

Weekly individual supervision

The Bilingual (Spanish) Training Program at Kaiser Permanente has the goal of preparing future therapists to serve our community by addressing the culturally specific needs of bicultural/bilingual/monolingual (Spanish) patients. Current language and cultural barriers for Latinx patients are addressed in this track through culturally informed supervision in the Spanish language, and additional didactics/classes on psychotherapy theories and interventions in the Spanish language. Spanish language supplemental didactics focus on how to make ordinary interventions more effective and culturally sensitive.

Interns proceed through an initial phase of training in which they learn how to conduct risk assessments, develop Stanley Brown Safety Plans, and develop, in collaboration with patients, treatment plans that address patients’ mental health needs. Once interns master foundational treatment approaches, they have opportunity to choose a specialty focus for further training. The specialties available include: Trauma Recovery Program, DREAM Team (Depression Treatment Program), and/ or Focused Individual Treatment (short term treatment).

The Bereavement Department offers services to the identified bereaved (i.e. the family, friends, and caregivers) of patients who pass away while enrolled in Kaiser East Bay Hospice services. The Bereavement Department provides proactive outreach to these bereaved including offering a compassionate presence, mailing educational materials throughout the year following their loss, support groups, weekly workshops, and individual grief counseling. The Bereavement Department also offers these services to any adults in the community who are interested, regardless of insurance status. All services are free of charge.

The pre-master’s intern participates in the provision of all of these services, including co-facilitating grief support groups with a licensed clinician, presenting at a weekly grief educational workshop attended by 50+ participants, and providing individuals with short-term individual grief counseling.

The intern works with the Training Director to assess and identify individuals who are appropriate for short term grief counseling vs those who require a higher level of care and long-term therapy support.

The intern provides individual grief counselling to a maximum of five clients per week and assists in planning an annual memorial for hospice and community bereaved. The intern also assists with additional programmatic duties as appropriate/desired. The intern is encouraged to identify and implement additional grief support programs and ideas in collaboration with the Training Director.

Mondays through Fridays from 8 am to 5 pm (this schedule might vary according to number of hours and days the trainee will be in the office.

Additionally, schedules might be flexed to accommodate interns facilitating groups in the evening.

The schedule will be a combination of in-person work at the local clinic and virtual work from home.

Trainees will be provided with the appropriate equipment to work at home.

The Bereavement track is a hybrid training track in which the intern will work both in person at the local clinic and from home.