Academic Programs

A survey conducted of all CACREP accredited School Counseling programs and all AAMFT accredited Family Therapy programs revealed only one university program offering an integrated and comprehensive SBFC curriculum: the Department of Counseling at California State University, Los Angeles. This program, which is accredited both as a CACREP Family Counseling program and as a CACREP School Counseling program, began in 1994 and grew out of the Mission Possible Program at CSULA. A handful of programs offer one course in family-school intervention (usually as an elective).

Some students with an interest in SBFC piece together their own program by a) taking two M.A. degrees (one in Family Counseling and one in School Counseling or School Psychology), or, b) taking the core courses in a counseling M.A. degree and then the elective courses for both the Family Counseling and the School Counseling specializations (this can total 78 semester units or more!).

Clearly, academic programs have not kept up with the felt need for SBFC identified by practitioners in the schools (and described in the review of the literature provided here).