Training Division

Train inside the system that is changing the field.

Most practicum and internship placements prepare students to work within the status quo. CICT is building something different — a clinical ecosystem where the framework, the supervision, the service delivery, and the culture are all connected. Students who train here do not just accumulate hours. They become part of what we are building.

How far you go is up to you.

The Ecosystem

One placement. Multiple dimensions.

CICT is the training division of a clinical enterprise that spans outpatient practice, intensive outpatient programming, and community impact. Students rotate through active settings and gain exposure to how clinical work is organized, delivered, and scaled across service models.

Clinical Practice

Illuminating Psychological Services

Outpatient group practice serving children, adolescents, and adults. The clinical home of the TCAT framework. Students carry individual caseloads and learn to formulate, treat, and document within a coherent integrative model.

Intensive Outpatient

California Healing Horizons

DHCS-certified IOP serving adults with co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders. Students work within a structured program model — group facilitation, individual sessions, and treatment planning in a higher level of care.

Community Impact

Illuminated Narrative Alliance

The nonprofit arm. School-based programming, community mental health outreach, and the A.C.T. initiative — longitudinal screening and intervention that follows children from early development through adulthood. Students who want to go beyond the therapy room have a place to do it.

You can train here and complete your hours. Or you can train here and begin building the career you actually want — across clinical practice, community programming, and training. The ecosystem is open. The depth is yours to choose.

Program Tracks

Two tracks. One standard.

Both tracks are structured around direct client contact, weekly supervision, and progressive integration of the TCAT framework. Hours and timelines follow the requirements of the student's doctoral program.

Practicum

Doctoral Practicum

  • 600–800 total hours
  • 16–24 hours per week
  • Minimum 1–2 days on site per week
  • 40% of hours must be face-to-face client contact
  • Unpaid position; stipends may be available
  • Students holding an LMFT, LPCC, or LCSW with 1,000 documented master's-level practicum hours may receive 200 hours of credit upon review
Duration: Per academic program requirements
Internship

Pre-Doctoral Internship

  • 1,500 total hours
  • Part-time schedule
  • Extended direct client contact across rotation sites
  • Advanced case formulation and independent TCAT application
  • Progression from structured supervision to increasing clinical autonomy
Duration: Per academic program requirements
Supervision

Direct. Weekly. Grounded in the framework.

Supervision at CICT is clinical formation. Every supervision session is an opportunity to examine how the student is internalizing TCAT — not just applying it.

TypeFrequencySupervisor
Individual supervisionWeekly — minimum 1 hourLicensed psychologist (primary supervisor)
Group supervisionWeeklyLicensed psychologist
Secondary supervisionAs scheduledMaster's-level licensed clinician

Primary supervision is provided by Dr. Ina Creekbaum, Ed.D., developer of the TCAT framework. Students receive supervision from the person who built the method.

The Experience

What students can expect.

📐

A coherent clinical framework

Students are not asked to synthesize competing orientations. TCAT provides a single, integrative architecture — three foundations, three agreement territories, the 4 Queries, and a daily practice — that structures every session. Students learn one way of working and go deep.

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Direct client contact with real populations

Students carry a caseload. At IPS, that means children, adolescents, and adults in outpatient therapy. At CHH, it means adults navigating co-occurring mental health and substance use disorders in an IOP setting. This is supervised practice, not observation.

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Supervision that forms, not just monitors

Weekly individual and group supervision is built around TCAT case formulation, query deployment, and agreement mapping. Supervision is where the framework moves from intellectual understanding to clinical instinct.

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Multiple evaluation methods

Students are evaluated through review of clinical documentation, supervision report, co-facilitation with clinical staff, direct observation, and where permitted, audio or video review. Competency is demonstrated, not assumed.

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Exposure beyond the therapy room

Students who want more than clinical hours have access to the broader ecosystem — community programming through the nonprofit, the certification pipeline, and the training institute itself. The training division is a door into all of it.

What We Expect

Standards of participation.

Students who train at CICT enter a clinical environment built on a specific framework and a specific set of values. These are the baseline for participation in the program.

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Engage the framework

Students are required to purchase, read, and actively practice Truth-Centered Agreement Therapy by Dr. Ina Creekbaum. The book is the clinical foundation of the training. Arriving without having engaged the material delays the work for everyone.

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Attendance and reliability

Students are expected to maintain consistent attendance, arrive on time, and honor their scheduled commitments to clients, supervision, and staff meetings. Clinical work depends on presence — and so does trust.

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Professional communication

Clear, timely, and respectful communication — with supervisors, colleagues, clients, and academic programs. If something is not working, say so directly. CICT values transparency over performance.

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Openness

TCAT is not taught in graduate programs — students are entering a clinical model and a culture that will be new to them. That requires genuine openness: to receiving feedback, to operating within a framework that may challenge prior training assumptions, and to engaging with the way we do things here rather than defaulting to what is familiar.

🏛️

Respect for the institution, the program, and the profession

Students represent CICT, their academic program, and the field of psychology. Conduct that undermines the integrity of any of these is not consistent with continued participation.

Ready to begin?

CICT partners with accredited doctoral programs to place practicum students and pre-doctoral interns. Placement begins with your academic program.

Your school is not yet a CICT partner?

If you are a doctoral student interested in training at CICT and your academic program does not currently have an agreement with the institute, we want to hear from you. We will work with your program to explore whether a training partnership can be established.

Inquire About a Partnership →