Assessment Practicum

The Developmental Disabilities Family Clinics provides family-focused comprehensive assessment services for children, adolescents, and adults at risk who live in some of Chicago 's most economically challenged areas. The DD Family Clinics are composed of professionals from medicine, nursing, psychiatry, psychology, social work, and speech/language. The clinic's medical staff has specializations in developmental pediatrics and psychiatry. The clinic emphasizes the value of the family, resources within the community, and the importance of a multidisciplinary lifespan approach in providing services. Specialty programs operated within the DD Family Clinics are: 1) The Adult Diagnostic and Intervention Program; 2) Hispanic Diagnostic and Family Support Program, and 3) Child and Adolescent Diagnostic and Family Support Program. Specialty Clinics include Dual Diagnosis Clinic, Autism Clinic and Hispanic Autism Clinic.

Practicum Guidelines

The DD Family Clinics provide a unique opportunity for students interested in acquiring diagnostic skills in the area of developmental disabilities. Students may rotate through the three programs or limit their rotation to one or two programs. Each rotation is closely supervised by our staff with extensive experience in the area of disabilities. In addition, for those bilingual students (Spanish), there is a unique opportunity to be able to learn the administration and scoring of bilingual tests with supervision by bilingual psychologists.

Practicum students participate in seminars covering a variety of topics related to disabilities, psychological testing of difficult cases, and use of specific tools (i.e., Leiter-R, NEPSY, Gordon, and other traditional tests such as the WISC IV, WAIS IV, WIAT II, VMI, etc.). Individual and group supervision are offered on a weekly basis (two hours weekly). The students participate in case staffings and family conferences.

Requirements :

Students are required to commit to 16 to 20 hours per week for nine months. Typically, the practicum starts in September (right after Labor Day).

Students are expected to be involved in all aspects of the assessment process: clinical interviewing, standardized test administration, scoring and interpretation, report writing, participation in the case staffing, and feedback to patient and family. Because the clinics operate in teams the student must be able to commit to Mondays and Wednesdays for the Children and Adult Teams or Tuesdays and Wednesdays for the Hispanic Team.

It is expected that students complete at least 10 full batteries. Other training activities will be scheduled based on the students' interest and ability and with the approval from their program's supervisor. At the beginning of the practicum year the student and the supervisor complete an “Assessment Practicum Training Agreement” which outlines the expectations and requirements of both our site and the student's program.

A maximum of three students will be accepted for this assessment practicum. All students will work under the supervision of a licensed clinical psychologist.

If you have questions about this Practicum experience, please feel free to contact the Director of Clinical Services:

Linda Sandman, MSW, LCSW
University of Illinois at Chicago
Department of Disability and Human Development (M/C 727)
1640 W. Roosevelt Road
Chicago , Illinois 60608-6904
Phone (312) 413-1640
Fax: (312) 413-1593
E-mail: lsandman@uic.edu