Expectations

Sakura counseling is a place to help you develop your counseling skills and help you see what your future could be in a group practice. This internship also allows you to see what it may feel like to own your own individual practice. An intern can expect to collaborate with their supervisor, other interns, associates, and fully licensed therapists to develop their counseling skills with clients. Interns can expect to be upheld to an anti-racist, anti-oppression, trauma informed lens of therapy for their clients and for their peers. Interns can expect to have clients specific to your counseling desire and experience.

An intern is much like an associate in the way that they are able to set their own schedule and see their clients via tele-health. As an emerging therapist, your role is to connect with your client from the first session until the completion of their therapeutic journey. As a student intern clinician, you hold a valuable role as you develop your counseling skills. Interns are able to set their schedule according to their preferences which allows interns the flexibility to have individual clients while also completing intakes.

This site allows their student interns to be more independent and work from home. This is both a benefit and a challenge. Working from home is a great benefit because we are able to work independently and create schedules that allow for flexibility. However, working from home can be a challenge, because making connection can feel more difficult especially early on. Sakura Counseling also allows student interns to create their own treatment plans and assessments for their clients which allows the intern to learn how to create specialized plans for their clients.

We honor accessibility for clients. Sakura will remain being primarily a tele-health clinic. However, we do have some clients and clinicians that have started to meet in person. We currently only have one office space for all clinicians, but we hope to expand as it becomes necessary related to client preferences.

We provide training on how to complete paperwork, use tele-health systems, as well as how to work with suicidal ideation and potential domestic violence. We also allow all staff to receive training through Pesi if there is a specific interest that is desired related to client care. All staff & interns are also offered a yearly stipend for additional training.

A dual role as an intake specialist and clinician is an important and valuable role to play; however, it is not required. The intake specialist receives extra direct hours though performing intake tasks and helps to better understand how a group practice runs. It is also great practice for rapport building with potential clients. Playing the role as an intake specialist and a therapist requires different skills but both play an important role in Sakura Counseling.

Part of being an intern is learning the full counseling process from start to finish. As interns, you are learning to provide temporary care with the expectation that you will one day terminate your client. A part of being an intern is learning how to complete client goals so that they may decide to terminate therapy. Termination is a part of the learning experience and is a great way to measure counseling skills. As an intern, you are providing temporary care for clients due to the limited time that you may have between internship and gaining your Associate license or similar certification.

Direct Client Sessions: Interns will receive $30 per hour for the time spent in direct counseling sessions with clients. This compensation reflects the valuable work conducted during these sessions.

Meetings: Interns will be compensated at a rate of $20 per hour during training sessions, team meetings, and other limited activities not involving direct client interaction.

Paperwork: All contractors are unpaid for their paperwork, emails, and documentation. Please note that time spent on administrative tasks such as paperwork and documentation is not compensated. However, we value the importance of these tasks in providing quality care to our clients.

We recognize the significance of the work carried out during client sessions, training, and meetings, and have structured our pay rates accordingly. Our aim is to ensure fair compensation for the various activities undertaken while upholding the high standard of care we provide to our clients.

Prospective interns and clinicians should apply through our application page and email their application document, resume, and cover letter to Interns@sakuracounseling.org. Our staff coordinator will reach out via email offering a time slot for the group interview. Due to the influx of applicants, it may take some time to follow up.

We conduct group interviews with some of our head staff. Interviews for intern applicants may include more than one prospective intern. We aim to hire between 10 and 20 interns per year. Group interviews focus of multicultural competency, supervision, and growth edges. In group interviews, we try to allow a rotation so that all interviewees are able to answer each question. We also allow some time for a questions at the end of the interview. Group interviews for the following year of most often conducted the first week in December.

We often reach out within 24-48 hours after the initial interview to let you know if we will be moving forward. The next steps will include contract agreements, a professional disclosure statement, payment paperwork, schedule preferences, and documents related to credentialing with the insurance panels we work with. Once you’re hired, we will provide you with the equipment to meet with client’s via tele-health. Training is conducted in person so that we can also take your staff picture and get to know you better. Training often is conducted for one week Monday through Friday. Training is conducted two weeks before the official start date with clients. The focuses for training are on our current therapy platforms, scheduling, intakes, mandatory reporting, supervision, and facilitating groups.