San Francisco General Hospital
Building 9, Room 130
2550 23rd Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
(415) 206-5270
Direct clinical service comprises a major part of the work at the Infant-Parent Program. The program provides home and office-based assessment and infant-parent psychotherapy to approximately 140 families a year when concerns exist regarding the relationship between a child under three years and his or her parents. Cases include failure-to-thrive infants; abused or neglected children; instances of extreme parental psychopathology; and cases involving legal custody and placement of youngsters. A multi-ethnic primarily low-income population is served.
Each year the program offers eight to ten part-and full-time, year-long traineeships to mental health and early childhood education professionals and graduate students wishing to receive intensive training in infant-parent assessment and treatment. The hours spent qualify as supervised hours for purposes of licensing in psychology, social work, and marriage and family therapy. A small cash award is available. Part-time trainees must be able to give twenty-four hours a week in order to be eligible. For trainees with appropriate experience, training in mental health consultation to child care or developmental neuropsychological assessment may be possible.
The training staff includes three Clinical Psychologists, one Child Psychiatrist, a Doctor of Mental Health licensed as a psychologist, three L.C.S.W.'s, and an M.F.T.
Trainees typically see four to five families a week primarily in home visits for purposes of both assessment and treatment. The approach is a psychotherapeutic one including help wtih access to concrete assistance, emotional support, non-didactic developmental guidance regarding child development, and insight-oriented psychotherapy focused on the relationship between parent and child.
The part-time training program consists of 4 1/2 hours a week of seminars, 3 hours a week of individual supervision, and 1 1/2 hours a week of group supervision. Trainees particpate in a weekly 1 1/2 hour Case Conference attended by all staff and trainees; each trainee has at least two opportunities during the year to present a case. There are two other weekly 1 1/2 hour seminars. The first of these focuses on infant and toddler development, along wtih the parallel evolution of parent-child interaction. The other seminar is devoted in the first half of the training year to the theory and practice of assessmnent and intervention in infant-parent difficulties; the second part of the year focuses on psychoanalytic theory and technique and the relation of these to infant-parent psychotherapy. Trainees are supervised intensively on each contact with a family, and they are guided in writing reports for referring agencies describing their assessment and treatment of families. Liaison and coordination of multiple agency involvement is a major effort in each case.
