The mission of Center for Human Services is to strengthen the community through counseling, education, and support to children, youth, adults, and families. Center for Human Services provides mental health treatment to children, youth, and families who are experiencing difficulties in their lives. We utilize a strengths-based, family-centered, trauma-informed, culturally relevant approach, and an array of strategies to support our clients in achieving their goals.

Internship Opportunities in the Mental Health Department:

• Office-based Mental Health: We provide mental health treatment to children, youth, and families who are experiencing difficulties in their lives. We work with such issues as depression, anxiety, trauma, grief and loss, ADD/ADHD, divorce and separations as well as other family disruptions and transitions. We use a strengths-based approach and strive to tailor our services to the particular strengths and needs of each of our clients. Office-based interns are located at our 148th/Shoreline and Edmonds clinics.

• School-based Mental Health: In providing mental health treatment to children and youth, often the easiest place to meet with our clients is at their schools. Based mostly out of our Shoreline/Edmonds locations, school-based interns will be assigned to various schools in multiple school districts such as Edmonds, Everett, Northshore, Shoreline and Mukilteo. Interns will be assigned to one to two schools, which they'll spend the full day at one school; there is no traveling back and forth during the day unless there are in-person meetings off campus. Emphasis of this internship is to provide structured, systemic care for clients within their schools while connecting with families, educators, and school staff to provide well-rounded supports for the clients.

Interns in the Mental Health department have the opportunity to be part of either our Office-based team in Shoreline or Edmonds; or be part of our School-based team in Shoreline and serving Mukilteo, Edmonds, Shoreline, Northshore, or Everett school districts. The first month of internship is focused on providing training and structure to help interns begin their journey as a mental health clinician. In a “typical” 20-hour-a-week, interns will spend approximately 60% in direct service, 20% in indirect service such as, documentation/reviewing client files, etc., and 20% in training and supervision. A "typical" internship caseload will consist of about 12-15 clients.

Please note that interns will not be guaranteed supervision with an Approved Clinical Supervisor as these supervisors typically work with our employees, however interns will be supervised by fully licensed clinicians. MSW interns may be supervised by licensed MHC and or a MSW supervisor who may or may not be fully licensed.

Interns are embedded in systems when they become part of the School-based team which may give more opportunities to influence those systems and/or groups of people.

Interns are embedded in systems when working as clinical mental health therapists which may give more opportunities to indirectly influence those systems at a larger scale.

- Students enrolled in a master's degree program for Mental Health Counseling (MHC), Master of Counseling Psychology (MACP), Marriage and Family Therapy (MFT), and Master of Social Work (MSW) are eligible to apply.

- Center for Human Services and the applicant’s school must have a signed learning agreement/agency affiliation agreement completed by the start of the internship start date.

- Applicants are expected to carry a caseload of 12-15 clients, and work a minimum of 20 hours per week for at least 10 months.

- Commitment to confronting racism, sexism, heterosexism, and other discriminatory practices.

- Ability to successfully work within a diverse cultural setting and provide culturally responsive services.

- Ability to work cooperatively as part of a team, and prompt and consistent attendance during scheduled working hours.

- Ability to work in an unstructured and unpredictable setting, ability to adapt to change and sense of humor.

Please visit our internship webpage here - https://www.chs-nw.org/about/careers/#internship. Applicants will need to fill out the Mental Health internship application and submit it with their resume attached to MHinternships@chs-nw.org. Group interviews will be scheduled around March/April and applicants will receive their decision no later than one week after the initial group interview. Most internships will begin in the Fall (August/September) to begin onboarding, training, etc. so that we can appropriately coincide with school district schedules.

Please note that our internship program will follow the Center for Human Services' schedule and NOT the University of Washington's academic schedule. Internships have a Fall start time (late August/first week of September) and Summer end time (late June), with the option to extend for 12 months.

Please contact us at MHInternships@chs-nw.org to inquire about Mental Health internships.