Professional Identification in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Chapter 10 discusses how the identity of the clinical child and adolescent psychologist forms as someone with specialized competencies and skills to provide services to children and adolescents and their families, and to conduct research into issues of development, psychotherapy, assessment and diagnosis, and treatment. It also covers how this identity is partially achieved through membership in professional organizations, personal continuing efforts to maintain competences and develop new skills, and advanced credentials or board certification in clinical child and adolescent psychology. It addresses that, although membership in professional organizations does not automatically bestow competencies or credentials on a specialty psychologist, it does permit the clinical child and adolescent psychologist to monitor changes in the field, remain current with evidence-based practice and scientific advances, seek counsel on clinical challenges and ethical dilemmas, and gain support from the specialty community of practitioners and scholars.

Supervision and Teaching

Chapter 7 discusses two competency areas that are important for some, but not all, clinical child and adolescent psychologists, which are providing clinical supervision to trainees or subordinate employees, and teaching students and trainees in college, university, or other educational settings. Depending on psychologists' work settings, they may be expected to spend some of their professional time in these activities, and it covers how the clinical child and adolescent psychologist will be placed in the role of providing information and facilitating learning, and in both cases there is a relationship between an authority figure (the psychologist) and a mentee (the clinical trainee or student) that must be carefully managed. It also addresses these two areas of professional activity, with reference to models of supervision and teaching, and to research on these topics.

Consultation in Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Chapter 6 outlines the key concepts of the core competency and function of working collaboratively with others to deliver the necessary services through consultation, which can take several forms, including having another professional (physician, nurse, social worker, teacher) conduct an intervention under advice and supervision from the psychologist, providing information about symptoms and screening for behavior problems and how to make a referral, advising juvenile care or detention workers about management techniques, or serving on a collaborative team by offering psychological insights that help create therapeutic interventions for children with certain conditions (e.g., maltreatment, chronic illness). It also provides formal definitions and models of consultation with examples of professional activities in school and pediatric settings.

Clinical Child and Adolescent Intervention Strategies

Chapter 5 provides an overview of a clinician's functional competencies with regard to psychological interventions with children and adolescents, and focuses on levels of intervention competency that permit a psychologist to provide good quality care to the child clients and their families–level of competency that is expected to be attained by well-trained psychologists in the years shortly after they have received their terminal degrees. It first briefly covers basic procedural issues in establishing the therapy contract, and then discusses types of therapeutic procedures that psychologists may competently use with their clients.

Conceptual and Scientific Foundations of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Chapter 2 discusses the conceptual and scientific foundations of clinical child and adolescent psychology, including development, social factors (including the microsystem, mesosystem, exosystem, macrosystem, and chronosystem), biological factors, and scientific foundations.

Interpersonal and Cultural Competencies

Chapter 9 discusses two separate competency areas that are important for all clinical child and adolescent psychologists, which are providing clinical work with sufficient interpersonal competence to facilitate the effectiveness of the clinical work, and providing clinical work with knowledge of, and sensitivity toward, the cultural factors that affect children's and families' behaviors and that affect the therapist-client interaction. It covers the difference between these very different competencies, and discusses how both are considered because they require finely tuned sensitivity to clients' worldviews. Both sets of competencies require an empathic awareness of children's and families' feelings and concerns, and the contextual factors that influence them. It also discusses literature and practice issues related to these two distinct areas of professional competency.

Case Formulation Models with Children, Adolescents, and Their Families

Chapter 4 discusses how case formulation helps therapists take an active and directive role in the collaborative endeavor of psychotherapy, how problems are defined, the types of changes that can be expected, and how to reach these goals, which all derive from the therapist's conceptualization of the case. It also discusses how case conceptualization is the framework for providing interventions that flexibly meet the specific needs of the client and guide the therapist's decision making, based on a knowledgeable appreciation of relevant evidence-based interventions. It then covers how formal psychological testing and the care in which a thorough assessment is made not only differ among practitioners, but how they can be heavily influenced by their theoretical orientation. It also covers the different views of dealing with problematic behavior, including either a failure to learn the necessary adaptive behaviors or competencies, or the learning of ineffective or maladaptive behaviors, and how careful assessment is necessary, including definition, observation, and recording of behaviors needing modification.

Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology

Chapter 1 discusses the specialty of clinical child and adolescent psychology, which includes research and practice applications to prevent or intervene with a range of mental and behavioral disorders; psychological aspects of physical conditions; and developmental challenges of children, adolescents, and their families. It also covers the various teams and professionals with whom the specialist may work, including teachers, pediatricians and pediatric nurses, community health teams, clinical researchers, and scientist, and it provides definitions of the specialty, populations served by the specialists, procedures and techniques used, work settings, relationships with other specialties, historial developments, and evidence-based practice.

Ethical Issues When Working with Children and Adolescents

Chapter 8 reviews the Ethical Principles of Psychologists and Code of Conduct adopted by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2002, and approved with amendments in June of that year. It focuses on some of the very basic questions and definitions in areas of the code as they apply to working with children. It also identifies potential risks associated with working with children as related to the professional code of ethics and to provide suggestions to aid in minimizing these risks. It also provides a model of helpful dialogue for the child clinician when ethical issues arise, which will assist the child and adolescent psychologist in navigating the complicated maze woven by all the interested parties tied to the child in treatment. While focused primarily on clinical practice, some discussion on issues about conducting research with children is also covered.

Clinical Assessment of Children, Adolescents, and Their Families

Chapter 3 presents the process involved in the social-emotional-behavioral assessment of children and adolescents and how this process can be conceptualized within a comprehensive problem-solving framework. It includes discussions about the importance of assessment in clinicians' therapeutic work with children, adolescents, and their families, the ways in which clinicians' theoretical orientations guide/define their practice, not only in terms of psychotherapeutic interventions, but also in terms of their assessment practices, the background in child and adolescent assessment, and how assessment can be comprehensively conceptualized as a problem-solving process for clinicians.