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 outpatient treatment on the Latin X Team and the Center for Mindfulness and Compassion (CMC). For the Latin X outpatient component, trainees see clients in the general psychiatry outpatient department who are members of a multidisciplinary, multicultural, linguistic, clinical team. For the CMC component, trainees are also members of an interdisciplinary team, where they conduct research, co-lead groups, and conduct evaluations. Trainees are required to be on site for a total of 40 hours per week, including one evening (though CMC research time and groups may be completed in a hybrid manner). Postgraduate trainees receive a stipend (including health insurance), and four weeks of paid vacation.
Latin X Team Role: The fellow in this role must be bilingual in English and Spanish. The focus of the fellowship is to equip social workers with the skills and knowledge to provide treatment to immigrants and refugees, and will focus on teaching clinical formulation and evidence-based treatments that integrate trauma-informed care, cultural competency, health equity, and legal advocacy. This position is designed to support the immigrant population as they process the grief inherent in migration, the hardships endured on their journey to the United States, and the complexity of adapting to a new environment.
CMC Role: The Center for Mindfulness and Compassion (CMC) is an interdisciplinary center located in the Cambridge Health Alliance Department of Psychiatry. Founded in 2015, its mission is to enhance health and well-being by integrating mindfulness and compassion into healthcare. CMC offers a broad range of programming with a focus on equitable access to healthcare, and has created an innovative Mindful Mental Health Service, which offers a variety of evidence-based, trauma-informed mindfulness programs for CHA patients. CMC is a center for excellence for translational clinical research on mindfulness and compassion, with ongoing collaborations with a number of research partners,and has research ranging from neuroscientific mechanisms of mindfulness to novel implementations of mindfulness programs for diverse populations in community health settings. CMC currently offers mindfulness groups in English, Spanish and Portuguese. CMC houses the Advanced Clinical Mindfulness Fellowship (ACMF), which offers training and mentorship for clinicians who wish to become leaders in integrating mindfulness into healthcare, and who have an interest in adapting mindfulness to diverse populations, and wish to deepen their clinical skills in bringing mindfulness to patients.
The fellow in this role is expected to pursue grant-funded research opportunities aligned with CMC priorities, working with CMC faculty and the CMC director. Pursuing research will be the top priority of the CMC portion of this fellowship, especially research related to mindfulness-based interventions in priority areas of need at CHA, such as geriatrics and immigrant mental health. The fellow will also have a clinical role and be a part of the Mindful Mental Health Service, co-leading mindfulness-based intervention groups in both English and Spanish, and conducting a weekly integrative mental health evaluation in the Mindful Mental Health Service. The fellow will offer mental wellness triage visits for Spanish speaking patients in CHA MindWell en Espanol, and provide clinical insight and cultural and linguistic review of the monthly newsletter for CHA MindWell en Espanol. The fellow will have supervision from the Center Director for research activities and with the associate medical director for the Mindful Mental Health Service for clinical work.
Trainee Duties and Clinical Responsibilities: In the ambulatory psychiatry department, social work trainees conduct individual psychosocial evaluations. They provide individual, group, and occasionally, couples and family psychotherapy, to patients on the Latin X Team. On the LatinX team, the fellows will carry an outpatient caseload that will comprise about fifty percent of the Latin X team side of the fellowship (10 hours/week), consisting of evaluations, time- limited cases, ongoing individual psychotherapy, and group treatment. On the CMC side, the fellows will have 4 clinical hours/week (only 20% of the CMC side of the fellowship), consisting of co-leading 1-2 groups, conducting MMHS intake evaluations, and conducting MindWell mental wellness triage visits.
Trainee Supervision: Each social work fellow receives a minimum of two hours of individual clinical supervision weekly, as well as weekly supervision for 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.
The CMC training program includes the following components:
- Monday afternoons at CMC, which includes participating in the Mindful Mental Health
Service (MMHS) team meeting twice monthly, twice monthly grand rounds, monthly CMC all-staff meeting, mentorship sessions with ACMF fellows, and research supervision.
- Formal training in MBCT (Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy), occurring in October.
- Weekly participation in the Certificate Program offered by the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy (occurring Wednesday evenings), and participation in two five-day retreats through this program, in the fall and spring, respectively. (Note this evening is in addition to one evening leading a clinical group during certain times of the year. Adjustments will be made to daytime hours to balance out the schedule). In-person attendance is recommended, but remote participation is also allowed. CMC has funds to pay for Certification Program tuition and remote participation, and the fellow is anticipated to pay for food and lodging if in-person participation is selected.
- Once formal training is complete, clinical opportunities to co-lead MBCT, Mindful Behavior Change (MBC) (if already trained), introductory and alumni mindfulness groups with senior clinicians, with mentorship and supervision from co-leaders and experts at CMC.
- Conducting intakes for patients interested in mindfulness opportunities, and helping figure out which intervention is best for a particular patient. In addition, learning to adapt mindfulness practices for patients struggling with a diverse number of diagnostic challenges, and for which patients mindfulness practices may not be recommended.
- Conducting short-term consultations to patients within the Mindful Mental Health Service who are needing more support at an individual level.
- Giving brief, informal presentations of academic journal articles regarding mindfulness-based clinical interventions at MMHS meetings (approximately once/quarter). These presentations support learning regarding evidence-based practice of mindfulness interventions.
- Conducting screening assessment and brief interventions as part of CHA MindWell, a community mental wellness program that connects patients to telephone counseling and tailored referrals (2 hours per week). In addition, this fellow is expected to help co-develop the CHAMindWell en Espanol newsletter cultural and linguistic review (1 hour per week), adapting the English version using clinical and cultural insight and expertise for our Spanish speakers in the CHA community.
- Developing an independent research project to gain deeper understanding of a topic of personal interest and support your next career steps in priority areas in collaboration with the Center Director.
- Participate in a monthly research meeting with CMC principal investigators.
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 and the adult OPD.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. The Latin X Team meeting is held on Thursday from 9:00am to 10:30am, and is required of all staff and trainees. The CMC Team meeting takes place on the second Monday from 1-2PM at CMC and the Mindful Mental Health Service meeting takes place on every other Monday from 3-4PM.
Treatment Modalities: The trainee would be given the opportunity to practice using a wide variety of short-term, 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 be in-depth training and supervision offered to trainees around learning how to practice using the Unified Protocol, and the fellow will treat clients using the UP throughout the course of the fellowship.
Outpatient Psychiatry Department Seminars: A wide variety of seminars are offered and encouraged, including Psychiatry Grand Rounds, CMC Grand Rounds, an Acute Crime Seminar, a Short-Term Psychodynamic Seminar, OPD Case Conference, and a Multicultural Seminar. Furthermore, there are trainee support groups for those trainees who identify as BIPOC as well as for those who identify as white allies. 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