Devereux Kanner: A residential treatment center for at risk youth with developmental disabilities.

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Devereux Kanner - Pre-doctoral Internship

The Devereux Kanner Center provides treatment services for approximately 250 children, adolescents, and young adults with the following disorders:

	Mental Retardation		Sexual Disorders
	Developmental Disabilities		Psychiatric Disorders
	Autism		Behavioral Disorders

Kanner Center Programs

The Kanner Center consists of the following programs:

MR/DD (Mental Retardation and Developmental Disabilities) program serves children, adolescents, and young adults with mental retardation, autism, and developmental disabilities. These individuals present with significant adaptive skill deficits combined with a wide array of challenging behaviors such as aggression, self-injurious behaviors, AWOL, and property destruction.
CABD (Children and Adolescents with Behavioral Disorders) is a program serving children and adolescents with mild MR to borderline intellectual functioning and co-occurring psychiatric disorders. Problems arising in this population include disruptive behavior disorders, personality disturbances, deficits in attention, mood disturbances, psychotic disorders, and anxiety disorders.
The Transitional Living Program provides opportunities for individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities at Kanner to continue to work on adaptive living and social skills in community-based settings. Emphasis is on preparation to transition to home communities and adult community living arrangements.
Carriage Place Program is a secured residential facility for male adolescent sex offenders with mental retardation. These individuals range from mild MR to borderline intellectual functioning and carry a number of additional psychiatric and behavioral diagnoses.
CARES (Childhood Autism Research and Education Services) offers a state of the science center-based, day education program for young children with autism (ages 4 to 16).
Services for individuals in the Family-based Treatment Program (FBTP) are provided by therapeutic treatment parents for one to four individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities living in the parents' own home. The primary goal is to develop both appropriate and responsible interpersonal behaviors so that family integration or supportive living can be achieved.

Typical Week

A Typical Week for the Kanner Center Intern involves:

Monday -Thursday:

Six to eight hours providing individual therapy and/or behavioral assessment/consultation for individuals across the various program areas.
Two hours providing group therapy with groups tailored to each intern's professional developmental needs and interests (e. g. sex-offender specific groups, psycho-educational groups, anger management groups, etc).
Five to six hours are spent on treatment planning, documentation, and collateral contacts such as writing progress notes, contacting families and outside agencies, updating treatment plans, and consulting with teachers and direct-care staff.
Four hours a week is typically devoted to psychological assessment.
One hour a week is spent in group supervision at the weekly clinical meeting which all psychology staff are required to attend.
Two - three hours a week are typically spent attending client meetings including ISPs (individual support plan), BSPs (behavioral support plan), ITAs (inter-agency meetings), medication reviews, and team meetings.
A minimum of four hours of individual supervision is provided weekly.
The remaining time is used for literature review, observation, data collection and report writing surrounding the intern's chosen outcome study for the year.

Friday:

All Devereux Pre-doctoral Interns attend a full day of seminars at Devereux's headquarters in Villanova, PA, Institute of Clinical Training & Research (ICTR). The interns spend the morning in a variety of Treatment Methods Seminars and a Multicultural Competency Seminar. Afternoons are comprised of a one-hour meeting/supervision with the Chief Clinical Officer and various short-term seminars (e.g. four sessions of psychopharmacology, six sessions of family therapy). In addition, ICTR has supported the intern class in attending various conferences and seminars.

Overview

The intern at Kanner receives a wide range of experiences and has the opportunity for additional involvement in other desired areas. A typical caseload for the Kanner Center Intern varies from 6 to 8 clients. The intern is responsible for one community home that houses 4 MR/DD clients. The intern serves as the staff clinician for the clients in that house and is involved in all aspects of case management and treatment planning. The intern also serves as the individual therapist for 3 CABD clients. The intern is encouraged to utilize a variety of techniques, modalities and creativity in his/her approach to developing interventions. Consulting with each client's teacher, direct care staff, treatment manager, and unit clinician involved is also of prime importance. The intern at Kanner may have consistent phone contact with families with regard to the treatment progress of their child. As appropriate, the intern may also have the opportunity to conduct family therapy or parent training for families who live close enough to Kanner to participate.

Training Supervision

The Kanner Center intern receives a minimum of four hours of individual supervision a week. The Clinical Director, Dr. Carol Anne McNellis, provides primary supervision for the outcome study, specific individual cases, group therapy, functional and behavioral assessment, and behavioral consultation/behavior support planning. The intern also has, minimally, two secondary supervisors. The secondary supervisors provide supervision in the areas of psychological assessment and individual, group, and family therapy.

Psychological Assessments

During the training year, the intern conducts various psychological assessments. The number of assessments required is determined by the intern's ability to demonstrate competency and the assessment needs of the Kanner Center. By the end of the internship year the intern must demonstrate a level of skill consistent with independent or minimally supervised practice in specific competencies across five core domains (i. e., interviewing, observation, cognitive assessment, achievement testing/adaptive behavior assessment, and use of behavior rating scales) on at least three assessments. The Kanner Center has the following testing equipment on site, however, other assessments area available for use through other Devereux centers:

WAIS-III	Leiter Inter. Perform. Scale-R	WIAT-II
CTONI	Bayley Scales- 2nd ed.	WRAT-3
WISC-IV	K-BIT	AAMR Adaptive Beh. Scales
Stanford Binet-V	PIAT-R	Vineland Adaptive Beh. Scales
Rorschach	Connors Teacher Rating Scales-R	CBA Reading & Writing Probes
TAT	Reynolds Child/Adol. Depression Scale	NEPSY
Forer Sentence Completion	Adol. Psychopathology Scale	CELP-3
Make a Picture Story	Prout-Strohmer Beh. Scale	Expressive One-Word Vocab. Test
DSMD	STAXI	WRAML
Reiss Scales	RCMAS	Beery VMI Drawing
GARS	PPVT-III	Beery VMI Motor
Connors Parent Rating Scales-R		Beery VMI Matching

Group Therapy

The intern at the Kanner Center will lead or co-lead two ongoing psychotherapy or psycho-educational groups throughout the year. These groups may vary in response to the intern's interests. Possible groups conducted may consist of sex-offender specific groups, anger management, and social skills groups.

Research Project

The intern is required to complete an applied research project that must be relevant and meaningful to the Kanner Center's clinical and quality management initiatives. Typically this involves collecting data, entering and analyzing data, writing, and presenting the research project. Recent projects have included analyzing the effects of the Picture Exchange Communication System (PECS) on challenging behaviors and looking at the recidivism rate of the discharged clients at the Carriage Place Juvenile Sexual Offenders Program. Each internship class is responsible for completing a group project. Past projects have included updating the internship website and creating intern handbooks.