The Louisville Family Center offers internship and practicum placements for students enrolled in a Clinicial Mental Health Counseling program who are interested in learning and practicing play therapy with children and/or adolescents. This program is designed to help the students complete their requirements for graduation while supporting the community by offering lower fee therapy services that are supervised by a licensed therapist. Most of our students come from programs in Mindfulness Transpersonal Therapy, Somatic Therapy, or Art Therapy from Naropa University, however we are also open to accepting applications from other programs as well.

For both practicum and internship, the Louisville Family Center partners with The Patchwork School to support students in completing their necessary hours in a milieu setting, and offering them the opportunity to learn through varying community experiences. Scroll down for more information on application requirements and The Patchwork School.

Practicum Details

For practicum students, the direct hours are primarily earned through working at The Patchwork School. The direct client hours are gained by working 3-4 hours per week in one of our three programs (toddlers, preschool, or kinder), alongside the teachers as “Support Staff.” In this role, the student is expected to support children with social and emotional challenges as they arise, including conflict resolution with NVC, utilizing play-therapy skills one-on-one with children in the space that seem to need extra help, or jumping in and supporting the staff with whatever activities are occurring. Should there be an appropriate pairing, the student may be paired one-on-one with one or more particular children. The students will be mentored during the day by one of our Directors that are also acting in the “Support Staff” role. The non-direct hours will be spent in team meetings to talk about specific students and curriculum, or by attending professional development days, parent/teacher meetings, trainings and by reading recommended material.

Internship Details

For internship students, the position includes direct hours at both The Patchwork School and Louisville Family Center. Direct client hours are split between milieu work at the school (see description above in Practicum Details) and one-on-one therapy at the Louisville Family Center with their own direct clients (including intake, therapy and termination). Clients are primarily children needing play therapy. Non-direct hours are spent partially at the school (again as described above) and partially at the Family Center in Group Supervision, doing progress notes, and other related training and business-related activities. Internship students are ideally expected to have plans to take Lisa Dion’s Synergetic Play Therapy class and/or Intensive Workshop.