Liaison Report:  ACCTA
(Association of Counseling Center Training Agencies)
Tony Cellucci
 
I attended the ACCTA meeting in Baltimore last month as the APTC liaison. I was stuck by the many similarities (e.g. size) and common interests between our groups. Their conference, like ours, balances internal vs. external needs. The job of training director, competencies, culture sharing, diversity, supervision, and self-care were all recurring themes. One difference is that these Training Directors are more like DCTs in that they write the self-study.
The meeting ran from Sat night through Tuesday which is long; their board meets the day before. Dr. Cindy Juntunen gave an excellent keynote on the APA HSPEC’s work on psychology as a health care profession and related competencies. They have a well- developed session for newer directors and breakout groups (passages) related to where directors place themselves developmentally and emotionally. They also have topical breakouts (affinity groups) at the conference end. Most meals were hosted at the hotel as a group, with one night of excursions. They have a mentoring program and keep a history, including pictures of their conferences.
ACCTA seems to have worked out the art of conducting smaller surveys and those data were presented at different points. For example, directors (n=76) reported that 87% of their interns had jobs by the end of the internship year. Also, the obstacles to adding slots within these internships are money, space and supervisors. They are in the process of conducting another survey related to CoA self-study experiences. ACCTA has a diversity scholar presentation program, with this year’s speakers addressing transgender needs and working with Asian males. I attended several smaller concurrent sessions on supervision and remediation plans.
My liaison report from APTC seemed to be well received. I bonded with Cathy Grus the first day who gave the APA perspective. In addition, Joyce Illfelder-Kaye led a CoA session regarding the process and first round of questions regarding changes within the G&P. This is a bit overwhelming at various levels, and she will be coming to our conference in the Spring for a similar meeting. I suspect it would be good to do some preplanning around this session and the revised questions. The conference ended with a dinner, awards and song.