Clinical Settings

Core Clinical Site

During the 12 month (minimum) clinical practicum, students will gain experience with a variety of individual and relational concerns and will collaborate with unique sets of interdisciplinary professionals.   All sites have recording capability and the option of live supervision as part of the weekly individual or group supervision. Having clinical experience in two multifaceted settings provides important breadth and depth to the development of a professional MFT identity.  Students accumulate a minimum of 500 clinical contact hours and more than 100 hours of clinical supervision during practicum.

Strong Family Therapy Services

All practicum students have a primary clinical placement at Strong Family Therapy Services (SFTS), a New York State regulated community mental health center serving children and adults across the lifecycle. Clinicians provide comprehensive assessment and treatment for individuals, couples and families representing the needs of our diverse Rochester community. MFT trainees work alongside staff clinicians, supervisors, core faculty, and interdisciplinary colleagues to help families discover their strengths and resources to resolve concerns including depression, anxiety, child behavior problems, family conflict, grief and loss, or cope with health concerns.  Weekly group supervision is interdisciplinary and includes psychiatry residents and psychology fellows to enhance learning.

Additional Clinical Settings

Highland Family Medicine Center

The Highland Family Medicine Center is a large urban medical practice that offers a multi-disciplinary Behavioral Health Service to individuals, couples, and families who come there for their total health care. Family Medicine has a strong commitment to team-based care and collaboration between and among a wide array of health professionals joining together to care for patients, families, and their communities. Walking in the door, MFT trainees become tremendously valuable members of the team; they provide individual, couple, and family assessment and treatment, and play critical roles in providing consultation to their collaborators in medicine, nursing, pharmacy, social work, and care management. Highland Family Medicine serves families from all over the city and surrounding suburbs, maintaining a clear commitment to and investment in the underserved and at-risk communities in our area. These families include refugees and immigrants, those who may be socioeconomically marginalized and under-resourced, those managing multiple chronic health conditions, those who have had family members involved with the justice system, those touched by community violence, and others. Many of these families have been coming to Family Medicine for generations and regard it as the ultimate place to receive culturally sensitive, compassionate, and comprehensive care, including behavioral health.

Highland Hospital

Highland Hospital is a 261-bed community hospital located between Highland Park and South Wedge neighborhoods in Rochester. The hospital’s mission is a commitment to excellence in healthcare, with patients and their families at the heart of all we do. While Highland is a general hospital, their specialties include bariatric surgery, total joint replacement, geriatric care, gynecologic oncology, prostate cancer treatment, women's health services, and maternity/labor and delivery. At Highland you will also be an embedded part of the highly diverse, interdisciplinary team of physicians, advanced practice providers, nurses, patient care techs, occupational, physical and speech therapists, chaplains, and others while you practice systemic, biopsychosocial-spiritual, Medical Family Therapy (MedFT). Through the course of the practicum year, MedFTs are supervised in the provision of evidence-informed biopsychosocial-spiritual, systemic care via assessment and intervention with individuals and families, collaboration and microteaching activities with the team, and other efforts to support improved patient outcomes and staff wellbeing. Our MedFTs provide culturally sensitive care to individuals, couples, and families experiencing illness, trauma, or end-of-life, while also promoting and facilitating communication and collaboration among healthcare system staff, between staff and patients and families, and between mental health and physical health professionals. MedFTs at Highland also promote health equity and aim to address social determinants of health based on age, race, class, gender, and sexual and gender identity through assessment, intervention, collaboration, and education.

Gender Wellness OBGYN

The Gender Wellness Behavioral Health Service is embedded in the large, urban OB/GYN practice, which also serves as a training site for medical residents. It has a multi-disciplinary, family-centered, and integrated approach to primary care aimed at improving health outcomes and reducing health disparities for underserved patients and expressions and those who are important to them. MFT trainees provide individual, couple, and family treatment to patients, as well as providing consultation to medical and nursing providers and ongoing partnership with residents, nurse practitioners, and physician faculty.

Pediatric Behavioral Health and Wellness

Child and Adolescent Outpatient Services meet the needs of families from diverse backgrounds who may benefit from outpatient assessment and treatment. Its services include diagnosis and treatment of children, adolescents, and families with a variety of mental health problems including depression, anxiety, attention deficits, emotional regulation difficulties, and other behavioral concerns. Families work with a primary therapist who is responsible for coordinating all aspects of care. This therapist is a member of a team that includes specialists in psychiatry, psychology, social work, counseling, family therapy and nursing. In addition, services are offered to infants, children, adolescents, and their families who may be experiencing stress due to a medical illness, change in family situations, or other life events.

Hillside Children’s Center (Residential Treatment)

With local origins in 1837, Hillside is one of the oldest family and youth non-profit human services organizations in the US. Hillside’s mission is to provide community-based services, education, and residential treatment to positively impact lives, in partnership with youth and families who have experienced trauma. Among other services, Hillside’s multidisciplinary Residential Treatment Facility (RTF) team provides holistic, strength- based mental health services in collaboration with youth and families to support the goal of safe reunification in the community. Together, youth and family members establish, learn, and practice skills and engage in therapeutic processes to heal from traumatic experiences and regain hope.

Genesee Mental Health Center (Rochester Regional Clinic)

GMHC is a community mental health clinic with a strong commitment to serving our diverse community. GMHC is centrally located and provides care to a wide range of people from the city of Rochester and surrounding areas. At GMHC we are dedicated to providing trauma informed patient centered care for everyone that walks through our doors. From anxiety and depression to bipolar and schizophrenia, our mental health providers use personalized, evidence-based care to help patients manage and work on the impacts they are experiencing on their day-to-day life. Patients receive talk therapy, medication management, and group therapy. MFT trainees will quickly become a valuable part of our supportive team of therapists, nurses, psychiatrists, psychologists, and access associates.

Strong Recovery (Chemical Dependency)

Strong Recovery provides comprehensive treatment to our diverse patients and families within and meets patient needs within the community. We are a multidisciplinary team, and the student intern can expect to learn from counselors, nurses, medical professionals, rehab therapists, peers, targeted case managers, and the leadership team. We treat all substance use disorders and specialize in opioid use disorders, for patients aged 14+. Our family program currently has two family specialists who treat all family members, whether they have a loved one with substance use or are themselves struggling with substance use. The intern will observe and facilitate various clinical services such as intake evaluations, individual, group, family, crisis services, discharge, and treatment planning, and attend weekly treatment team meetings.

St. Joseph’s Neighborhood Center

St. Joseph’s Neighborhood Center, rooted in the caring tradition of the Sisters of St. Joseph, provides comprehensive physical and mental health services to uninsured and underinsured people in and around Rochester, New York. Its services include crisis counseling, family counseling, spirituality, women’s groups, stress reduction groups, and psychiatric consultations, in addition to physical health, allied health professional services (i.e. dental, OT), and social work. Its clientele includes many who are employed yet unable to cover healthcare expenses, students and people with disabilities, from every race and ethnicity and representing an 8- county region.

Additional Clinical Experiences

Our MS MFT students also participate in a range of clinical observation opportunities available throughout our medical center and Rochester community, many of which are aligned with their individual learning goals. Some examples include: our Rochester community mobile crisis team, the psychiatric emergency department, substance use/chemical dependency groups and family sessions, eating disorder treatment, serious and persistent mental illness (SPMI) care, neurology and somatic-focused consultations, fertility center, memory care clinic, developmental pediatrics, chronic pain, trans and LGBTQ+ focused care, and school-based support services.