Fellowship Description: This Advanced Social Work Fellowship begins in September, 2026 and finishes in August, 2027. This training experience involves the opportunity to provide clinical services and to take part in advanced training opportunities. This fellowship is full time and is split evenly between perinatal mental health and adult outpatient components. For the outpatient component, trainees see clients in the general psychiatry outpatient department and are members of a multidisciplinary clinical team. For the perinatal component, trainees are also members of an interdisciplinary team, held in Primary Care Behavioral Health Integration (PCBHI), located in Women’s Health. The fellow will see patients with a variety of presentations commonly seen among perinatal patients, and will conduct evaluations and provide time- limited, goal- oriented psychotherapy. Trainees are required to be on site for a total of 40 hours per week, including one evening. Postgraduate trainees receive a stipend (including health insurance), and four weeks of paid vacation.
Trainee Duties and Clinical Responsibilities: The social work fellow will carry a caseload of 20 patient billable hours, representing a 50% productivity expectation, split between Women’s Health (10 hours) and the adult OPD (10 hours). In the ambulatory psychiatry department, social work trainees conduct individual psychosocial evaluations. They provide individual, group, and occasionally, couples and family psychotherapy, to patients in general psychiatry.
Trainee Supervision: Each social work fellow receives a minimum of two hours of individual supervision weekly, as well as weekly supervision in the Unified Protocol. All supervision is provided by independently licensed social workers, as well as senior staff in other disciplines. Additional specialized supervision is arranged as needed.
Orientation: At the start of the training year in September, incoming fellows will be expected to participate in hospital-wide orientation programs, as well as orientation specific to social work, the adult OPD, and inpatient psychiatry. Trainees will also learn to use EPIC, the electronic medical record.
OPD Team Meeting: This interdisciplinary weekly meeting includes trainees and staff. During this meeting, new evaluations of patients are assigned, intake evaluations are completed and presented, cases are reviewed, clinical consultations are extended to all team members, and basic clinical teaching is conducted. Team meeting is held Tuesday mornings from 9:00am to 12 noon, and is required of all staff and trainees.
Treatment Modalities: The trainee would be given the opportunity to practice using a wide variety of evidence-based treatment options including: UP, CBT, DBT, Motivational Interviewing, Solution Focused Treatment,Short-Term Psychodynamic Psychotherapy, Family Systems Treatment, and Trauma Focused Treatment. There will also be a particular emphasis on training in the Unified Protocol,and trainees will be treating clients using the UP over the course of the fellowship. In addition,there will also be an opportunity for the fellow to provide psychodynamic, goal-oriented, time-limited treatment to one client, supervised by a clinician with short-term psychodynamic psychotherapy expertise.
Outpatient Psychiatry Department Seminars: A wide variety of seminars are offered and encouraged, including the Unified Protocol, Grand Rounds, an Acute Crime Seminar, a Short-Term Psychodynamic Seminar, a Multicultural Seminar, and an OPD Case Conference. In addition to these seminars, additional training may be offered including: CBT for psychosis, CBT for depression, and CBT for Complex PTSD.
Professional Development Seminar: SW fellows from our eight fellowship programs meet biweekly and have guest speakers present on multiple aspects of the social work profession.
Application Procedures
Fellowships are available to students who have completed an MSW from an accredited institution. Social work fellows are awarded an annual stipend of approximately $62,000 for a 12-month training year, with a 4-week paid vacation, holiday and sick time included. Fellows will be expected to have received their LCSW by the fall of 2026.
Trainees who are best matched to the fellowship program are mature and experienced students with varied clinical backgrounds and strong recommendations from both academic and clinical settings. Applicants for advanced social work training should submit a cover letter, C.V. and three letters of recommendation by March 27, 2026 to our program coordinator, John MacCumascaigh, at jmaccumascaigh@challiance.org.
Phillip Brown, LICSW
Director of Social Work Training
Chief of Psychiatry Social Work