DCT approval of hours

[yrggiw]

Are practicum hours which are not DCT approved worthless for internship applications? Are they worse than worthless in that they might make me look worse than if I didn't have them? It seems to me it would be a red flag for an applicant to have a lot of practium hours which the DCT refuses to sign off on.

My program has a fairly limited selection of practicum sites and there are some weaknesses in them in that certain training opportunities are not well represented in the list of sites.

I had been doing a supplemental practicum to fill a training gap. It was DCT approved (in fact my DCT was the one who told me about the site!) but not considered an "official practicum". But at the beginning of the fall semester we were told of a policy change and informed that the DCT won't sign off hours from these "unofficial practicum" sites anymore going forward. It's not clear that there's some obvious deficiency with these unofficial sites and some in fact have been official practica in the past. Our practicum list has a lot of fluctuation each year for reasons that are not clear.

I'm being told that I can document these experiences somewhere on my internship applications but that the hours won't be approved by my DCT. No one can give me a straight answer about what having a bunch of "unapproved" hours means. I can't even find any evidence that this issue is something that comes up a lot in other programs. Is this something common?

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[WisNeuro]

Yeah, these are....problematic, to say the least. If they are listed on the application somewhere, how well can you explain the situation and why the DCT would sign off on them?

 

[yrggiw]

Yeah, these are....problematic, to say the least. If they are listed on the application somewhere, how well can you explain the situation and why the DCT would sign off on them?

I can certainly explain that when I started there it was approved and that there was a policy shift leading my later hours to not be approved (my ones from before this semester began will be signed off on) but I don't know what it is that makes one site official and another unofficial.

 

[WisNeuro]

I can certainly explain that when I started there it was approved and that there was a policy shift leading my later hours to not be approved (my ones from before this semester began will be signed off on) but I don't know what it is that makes one site official and another unofficial.

This is something you'd be better off figuring out the answer for and knowing how to explain it on interviews. It's definitely a question I would ask after reviewing an app, and the the adequacy of the answer would lead to me either overlooking the situation, or red flagging the app.

 

[MCParent]

But at the beginning of the fall semester we were told of a policy change and informed that the DCT won't sign off hours from these "unofficial practicum" sites anymore going forward.

External sites should generally not be yanked from approval mid-semester, after students have agreed to work at the site. Are you sure DCT does not mean "I'll sign off on everyone in them now but no one else should sign up for them"?

I don't know how your program makes distinctions between "DCT approved" and "official" or whatever. Spots are supervised by a licensed psychologist, provide ethical training, and went through some process to get the OK to place students there, or they aren't. Those processes are covered in APA accreditation renewals, so the site should not be so hurky jerky about whether sites are approved or not.

 

[psych.meout]

External sites should generally not be yanked from approval mid-semester, after students have agreed to work at the site. Are you sure DCT does not mean "I'll sign off on everyone in them now but no one else should sign up for them"?

I don't know how your program makes distinctions between "DCT approved" and "official" or whatever. Spots are supervised by a licensed psychologist, provide ethical training, and went through some process to get the OK to place students there, or they aren't. Those processes are covered in APA accreditation renewals, so the site should not be so hurky jerky about whether sites are approved or not.

This is why I think there was some incident that spurred this change.

I'm guessing that a student did something that led to this change, e.g. using one of these "unofficial sites" without getting pre-approval, leading to conflicts once the DCT or other people found out.

 

[yrggiw]

External sites should generally not be yanked from approval mid-semester, after students have agreed to work at the site. Are you sure DCT does not mean "I'll sign off on everyone in them now but no one else should sign up for them"?

I'm certain that my hours from the day i was notified on will not get DCT approval. I asked for a lot of clarification about it.

I also know that other students are pursuing new supplemental placements at some of these sites and are being told the same 'you can do this but I won't sign off on the hours for internship' thing. So it's this strange middle ground of being known by the DCT but not approved for internship. It has a lot of us in this confused situation of not knowing how these hours will be viewed.

I'm phasing out my involvement with my "unofficial" site but wanted to be sure to fulfill my year commitment to them before leaving because it feels like the right thing to do. Thus I'm going to have some of my hours count but not all of them.

I'm pretty concerned that it seems like this is not something common to other programs.

 

[psych.meout]

Yeah, it's definitely atypical and weird.

In my program, new practicum sites do develop from student interests and efforts to establish them as proper training sites. Once a site is established as acceptable, something would have to happen there for it to no longer be approved, e.g. the current supervisor leaving without an acceptable substitute being available to continue supervision. They definitely wouldn't rescind approval mid-semester, but still allow us to use the site, though without being able to use the hours for the purposes of internship applications.

 

[MCParent]

I'm phasing out my involvement with my "unofficial" site but wanted to be sure to fulfill my year commitment to them before leaving because it feels like the right thing to do. Thus I'm going to have some of my hours count but not all of them.

I'm pretty concerned that it seems like this is not something common to other programs.

If you can't count the hours you have no obligation to be at the site anymore unless you are sure you need a letter or something. You agreed under a condition that is no longer met, and the issue is between your DCT and the site, not you. Don't waste your time because other people are disorganized.

It's not normal at all. Unless they are aware of a major and irreparable ethical violation at the site.

 

[psych.meout]

If you can't count the hours you have no obligation to be at the site anymore unless you are sure you need a letter or something. You agreed under a condition that is no longer met, and the issue is between your DCT and the site, not you. Don't waste your time because other people are disorganized.

It's not normal at all. Unless they are aware of a major and irreparable ethical violation at the site.

And if it's a good site with good supervisors, they'll understand why you have to leave abruptly. The more and more I hear about this, the more I get the impression that this was something personal and not some professional or ethical issue with the training you were getting.

 

[smalltownpsych]

We only had program-approved practicum sites. I tried to create a practicum placement that would have been paid, but the supervisor wasn't willing to comply with the requirements of our program. I spent that year at a VA instead as I didn't want to mess with anything dodgy at that point in my career. It sounds like the OP's program was getting itself into trouble by having unofficial sites that they approved of and are cracking down. That doesn't seem very fair or reasonable to do after the fact. Especially since they never should have created this problem in the first place.

 

[PsyDr]

I had something similar from running around neurology. Iirc, and I'm not even close to sure there was an "in" either around the "peer" section or the research section. Again iirc the description in the peer counseling/consultation or whatever had something about such hours. I had to explain the spike on my application in each interview. People seeemed to respond well to the honest explanation along the lines of, "i had this experience with the blessing of my program, I wasn't quite sure where to put it, so I read the description of each section and put it where it seemed to go. I hope this wasn't misleading, but I didn't know what to do."