Education & Standards Committee Update

Education & Standards Committee Update

By Meghan Miller, PhD
Member-at-Large: Education & Standards

Over the past two years, members of SCCAP’s Education and Standards Committee have been hard at work participating in the development of training guidelines specific to clinical child and adolescent psychology. This issue, Dr. Sunhye Bai, SCCAP’s representative on the Training Guidelines Task Force, provides an update on this important work.

The Development of Training Guidelines for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (Inclusive of Pediatric Psychology)

By Sunhye Bai, PhD

The Task Force for the development of Training Guidelines for Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (Inclusive of Pediatric Psychology), led by Cathy Stough, Ph.D., continued their hard work during the past quarter. Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology has been recognized as a specialty in professional psychology since 1998. Despite this recognition, approved training guidelines for the development of the unique advanced knowledge and skills required for this specialty, are lacking. The Clinical Child and Pediatric Psychology Training Council (CCaPPTC), in partnership with SCCAP, the Society for Pediatric Psychology (SPP) and the American Board of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology (ABCCAP) formed a Task Force for the development of these Training Guidelines. The Training Guidelines (1) recognize that specialized training is needed to attain competency in this subspecialty, (2) protect consumers and the public by ensuring that providers of psychological services for children, adolescents, and their families are adequately prepared, (3) assist trainers at all levels of the training sequence to provide competent specialty education, (4) provide guidance to legal, ethical, and credentialing organizations, and (5) help prospective trainees in selecting training programs to become specialized clinicians and scientists in the specialty.

The Task Force for the development of Training Guidelines is made up of clinical child and adolescent psychologists holding diverse perspectives. Significant efforts were made to ensure Task Force membership included representatives from programs at all training levels (i.e., graduate, internship, postdoctoral) and various types and structures of programs (e.g., APA and PCSAS-affiliated programs, PsyD and PhD programs). Since its launch in November 2022, the Task Force has completed an initial draft of the Training Guidelines, and has completed several iterations of revisions with feedback from the Boards of SCCAP, CCaPPTC, SPP and ABCCAP.  Currently, we are obtaining approval from the Boards to submit the Training Guidelines to the American Psychological Association (APA) and their Board of Educational Affairs. Following this review, the document will be made available for public comment – including those from SCCAP membership – which may inform subsequent revisions. We sincerely thank our partners, including the SCCAP Board, for their valuable feedback throughout the development of the Training Guidelines. We look forward to continuing to share updates about our work.