It provides support groups for children who are experiencing difficulties and runs parenting groups to look at behaviour management techniques. It also runs direct individual therapy sessions, with a focus on brief interventions for explicit difficulties that can be resolved in usually no more than 5 or 6 appointments.

The Psychology Assistant will work under the supervision of the Psychology Coordinator. Activities will vary greatly depending on the level of Spanish and clinical experience of the volunteer as well as based on the activities planned for the time of year that the volunteer joins the psychology team.

In addition, the length of time that the volunteer stays in SKIP will determine the activities that they are able to do in psychology.The assistant will typically spend between 2 and 4 sessions a week working with psychology, and the remainder of sessions will be within the other Education and Family Welfare departments as is appropriate given the organisation’s needs and the volunteer’s interest.

Assistants with Low level of Spanish AND/OR a short term placement (3 months or less): Activities for these volunteers will mainly involve working with children in SKIP with special learning or behavioral needs. Even if a volunteer has a lot of clinical experience because of the short time and/or low level of Spanish these are the activities that the assistant will be able to do.

Assistants will:

  • Conduct structured observations in the classroom of student behavior in order to assist in lesson planning, therapy goals, or group planning for the psychologist and teachers
  • Provide classroom assistance as a teacher’s aide for students with special learning or behavioral needs
  • Meet with the psychologist for individual or group supervision regarding the students’ needs
  • Assist with academic support for younger children in reading and math
  • Assistants with higher levels of Spanish AND more clinical experience AND a longer term placement (3 months or more): Activities may include the following:
  • Provide classroom assistance as a teacher’s aide for students with special learning or behavioral needs (most volunteers will start in this role as a way to get to know the students)
  • Assisting in the planning of and/or carrying out group therapy sessions for primary school children
  • Assisting in planning of and/or carrying out workshops for adolescents or mothers on various topics (including child development, mental health, healthy relationships and preventing interpersonal violence)
  • Observing psycho-educational evaluations, and assisting with observations of referred children, report writing, and aspects of testing as appropriate.

In all cases the volunteers will be supervised by the Psychology Coordinator through supervision meetings. However, the psychology coordinator will not be directly assisting in the assistants sessions with the children. We also do not have the capacity to provide constant interpretation support for the language barrier.

We will have people available to assist in occasional interpretations so that you can talk with the teacher or other staff member as needed.