Integrating French second-language experiences into clinical psychology training to enhance retention of English-speaking trainees
Context: Minority communities need access to linguistically/culturally sensitive mental health services. In this respect, Québec Anglophones face a retention challenge: Many English-speaking clinical psychology trainee students leave Québec upon graduation, thereby reducing the available pool of English-speaking mental health practitioners. Reasons include linguistic challenges in establishing a sustainable clinical practice in Québec, such as inability to meet French-language requirements of the Ordre des psychologues du Québec and/or inability to build a practice that includes Francophone clients. Concordia's Psychology Department is instituting a novel approach to addressing this challenge by integrating French-language experiences for English-speaking trainees into its program. This provides the project setting; we will closely study Concordia's experience and conduct a systematic review of literature on relevant best practices.
Main objective: Deliver a report on best practices for French second-language training and assessment for trainees in clinical psychology with a focus on potential implications for trainee retention.
Procedures: Procedures include (1) Examining the literature worldwide on best practices for language-training of mental health clinicians; (2) Interviewing 30 Concordia clinical psychology trainees; (3) Interviewing participating clinical supervisors; (4) Consulting community-based practicing clinicians about experiences using their secondlanguage-French with Francophone clients.
Data analyses: Systematic Reviews of the literature; Qualitative Analyses of interview data.
Potential contributions:
enhancing retention of English-speaking clinical psychology trainees in Québec, thereby increasing support for the Anglophones community; laying foundations for future mixed-methods assessments of such second-language training support;
providing support for similar English-language experiences for Francophone trainees, thereby further increasing the availability of practitioners for Anglophones.