Psychology internship remuneration in Québec
Psychology internship remuneration in Québec – English Translation of FIDEP petition at goo.gl/wk2Xgc.
To sign this petition, please complete the 3 following steps:
- Step 1: Fill out the form under the text of the petition and submit it (you must accept the conditions to be able to sign the petition before sending the form).
- Step 2: Check your email inbox and open the message sent by the Québec National Assembly
- Step 3: Open this message and click the link allowing you to save your signature.
Please note that you can sign the same petition only once.
Text of the petition
CONSIDERING that, since 2006 a third cycle doctoral degree is required to obtain the title of psychologist in Quebec;
CONSIDERING that, as part of this doctoral degree, students must complete a mandatory internship of 1600 hours that is currently unpaid in Québec;
CONSIDERING that, this internship corresponds to one year of full-time work which is usually completed within Québec public networks of health and social services and education, and that the interns in psychology offer professional services to Québec residents;
CONSIDERING that, in addition to working one full year without receiving any pay, interns in psychology must pay between $ 1,300 and $ 6,000 of tuition fees during this internship year;
CONSIDERING that, in North America, Quebec is the only province that does not offer any remuneration to interns in psychology, the Canadian average being over $ 31,000;
CONSIDERING that, Quebec interns in psychology perform about 80% of a psychologist’s tasks during the internship;
CONSIDERING that, interns offer their services under minimal supervision, which represents 12.5% of their working hours;
CONSIDERING that, residents in medicine in Quebec, with a comparable number of years of education and a similar degree of autonomy than psychology interns, are paid up to $ 45,000 in their first year of residence;
We, the undersigned, ask the Government of Québec to mandate a fair remuneration internships in psychology in Quebec and to pay all psychology interns working in the public sector.
CPA Letter to Employers
CPA CEO, Dr. Karen Cohen, has written a letter to major employers in Canada requesting a meeting with their leadership to discuss ways in which they can address the mental health needs of their employees to improve workplace morale and productivity. Click here to read the letter.
New CPA Section
The CPA would like to announce the formation of a new Section – Psychologists in Hospitals and Health Centers. This Section will provide a forum for psychologists who are employed, practice, teach, or conduct research in hospitals and health care settings. Convention delegates are invited to attend the Town Hall and organizational meeting that will be held during the CPA’s 73rd Annual Convention in Halifax.
Proposal for Funding: CPA, HEAL and Dr. P. Hausdorf (CSIOP)
The CPA, on behalf of a subset of the Health Action Lobby (HEAL) member organizations and associations, and with Dr. Peter Hausdorf, Chair, Canadian Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychology (CSIOP), submitted a proposal for funding to Health Canada. The goal of this proposal was to develop a web-based survey that would allow for the assessment of the work-related health and well-being of Canada’s health professionals. CPA was recently informed that Health Canada would not be providing funding for any additional projects. The CPA is pursuing other funding options.
Mental Health of Federal Public Servants
CPA has initiated a series of meetings with the federal government about the mental health of its human resource. Recent reports in the Ottawa Citizen indicate that approximately 40% of the disability claims of federal public servants are mental health related. CPA hopes to work with communities of interest in addressing the primary, secondary and tertiary mental health needs of Canada’s workforce. CPA hopes to engage its communities of experts and be able to lend assistance in meeting these needs and in promoting the system change necessary to enhancing access to psychological services when these are needed. Contact Drs. Cohen or Service at CPA Executive Office for more information (executiveoffice@cpa.ca).
Ontario Psychological Association Early Career Psychologist Project
This document is a practical organizational guide for Psychological Associations about how to develop and maintain the membership and involvement of early career psychologists in their Association. It is a compilation of the efforts and strategies of the Early Career Psychologist Taskforce in the Ontario Psychological Association (OPA). Many of the ideas and strategies can be broadly applied and modified to meet the needs of both small and large Associations. Click here to download the guide or contact the OPA for more information.
Supply and Demand Task Force
There are a number of pressing issues which need to be addressed regarding the supply of and demand for psychologists. A large proportion of the psychology workforce is approaching retirement. Who will take their places? How many people do we need to train? How should we plan to ensure that there are enough psychologists in areas such as prevention, health promotion and rehabilitation? Will we have an adequate number of psychologists to conduct research, train future students, and develop programs? We have data about the number of students entering and graduating from psychology programs, but little about the nature of their training, and even less about their career paths after graduation. We lack information on how many psychologists are actively practicing in the jurisdiction in which they are licensed, how many are publicly versus privately funded, how many are in health versus correctional versus school, how many are full-time versus part-time, etc.
In 2008, CPA struck a task force to examine issues related to the supply of and demand for psychologists in Canada.
View the Spring 2009 issue of Psynopsis for an article on supply and demand issues and the task force.
The task force’s final report was submitted to and accepted by the CPA Board in November 2010. Click here to view the report.
G7
CPA is a member of this group of national health care associations outside of medicine and nursing organized to advocate for the needs of this important health human resource that operates both within and outside of the public health sector. The G7 recently met to establish an advocacy agenda for the group around access to service and is working collaboratively to develop common datasets among provider groups to collect information about Canada’s health human resource.