Bilingual Psychologists SIG Update

Bilingual Psychologists SIG Update

By Hannah Jones, PhD
Bilingual Psychologists SIG Chair

We are excited to announce that the Bilingual Psychologists Special Interest Group was just approved by the Society of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (SCCAP). There were fifty-seven child clinical and adolescent psychologists and trainees that expressed interest and supported the development of this new Special Interest Group (SIG). This SIG is dedicated to advocacy, training, mentorship, and leadership for bilingual clinical child and adolescent psychologists and trainees. The primary goal of the Bilingual Psychologists SIG is to develop a professional network to support clinicians, researchers, and educators in the development of psychological practice, policy, and guidelines to improve the well-being and quality of care for linguistically diverse youth and families.

Across the United States, there is a growing need for clinical child and adolescent psychologists to provide care in languages other than English, especially Spanish. As the workforce begins to grow in bilingual providers, there is an increasing need to provide specialized support, training, and mentorship. This has led to a growing need to connect bilingual clinicians, researchers, and educators across the United States to provide support for those trying to create bilingual services and programs as well as to share resources to improve clinical language skills.

The objectives of the Bilingual Psychologists SIG are as follows:

• create a national network of bilingual child and adolescent providers and training programs
• develop a resource bank to share clinical materials in different languages
• form work groups to create guidelines for bilingual training and supervision
• advocate for the unique needs of linguistically diverse families
• provide mentorship for bilingual trainees to further expand the bilingual workforce
• define best practices for bilingual assessment of linguistically diverse youth
• discuss and advocate for the unique needs of bilingual child clinical and adolescent providers

We invite all interested psychologists and trainees who are bilingual to join the Bilingual Psychologists Special Interest Group! We are planning on hosting a social meet-and-greet at the upcoming American Psychological Association conference in August to network and connect.

To be added to the Bilingual Psychologists Listserv contact Hannah Jones (you must be a SCCAP member to join the listserv). For more information, please see our newly developed website here.