Internships

Consejo Counseling and Referral Services

Location: Rainier Valley, Seattle
Website: http://www.consejo-wa.org

Consejo is a nonprofit agency that provides bilingual, culturally relevant mental health, domestic violence, and substance abuse services primarily to the Latino community in Seattle.

Intern: Angela Garland, class of 2007
Length of internship: Two and a half months

Compensation: None

My internship at Consejo consisted of a wide variety of responsibilities and experiences, including facilitating adult mental health groups, providing art therapy and relational support for clients, observing individual therapy sessions in the child mental health department, and becoming familiar with paperwork and procedures specific to the public mental health sector.

What was a typical day like? There is never a truly “typical” day at Consejo! You never know who you will encounter or what situations you will face. On adult group session days, I spent several hours facilitating therapy activities, developing supportive relationships with clients, helping to serve a meal, and cleaning up afterwards. Other days consisted of meeting with other counselors to discuss client profiles and observing child counseling sessions.

Tell us about one of your favorite experiences/memories while working there. I remember the day I arrived for a group session and excited voices called my name, saying how glad they were to see me. It was so wonderful to realize that I knew people and their stories and was having an impact on their lives by listening, caring, and sometimes just being there.

What was the best thing about the internship? Learning from the therapists and building relationships with clients. Getting to know the staff and clients at Consejo transformed the internship from being educationally driven to also being a truly meaningful experience.

What was the hardest thing? Being an intern at organizations such as Consejo requires a high level of independence and initiative, which can at times become frustrating. However, making the effort to get to know people in various departments and seek out opportunities to learn and be challenged is entirely worth the effort!

How did the experience impact you? This internship has impacted me in a wide variety of ways. It has substantially increased my understanding of the public mental health sector, the various paths of graduate training that prepare professionals to work in this field, and the variety of needs among the Latino population. I have also gained practical skills in counseling, wrestled with issues of faith and practice, and gained a stronger sense for the direction in which I desire to pursue a career in psychology.

What do you wish you had known beforehand? I wish I had known more concretely what my responsibilities would be what my schedule would be like. Due to the nature of the organization, work days don’t always operate on regular schedules or with expected activities, and knowing this beforehand would have helped facilitate a quicker transition into this environment.

Would you recommend the internship to others? Yes. It is a very specialized internship that is best suited for those who are highly motivated and specifically interested in psychology, counseling, or social work within a cross-cultural setting, but provides extremely valuable experiences in those particular areas. Spanish language abilities are also extremely beneficial. Finally, while this experience was valuable for its duration of one quarter, committing for a longer period of time would increase the variety and depth of experience.