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BetterWorld Art Therapy Internship Program

2nd/3rd Year Graduate Art Therapy Internship

INTERNSHIP POSITIONS ARE FILLED for the 2026-2027 academic year.

Thank you for your interest! Applications are accepted in January and February each year.

Applicants may only be rising 2nd or 3rd year art therapy graduate students to practice w/children, adolescents, adults, & families.

Not a practicum. Applicants must have completed practicum experiences to apply for this full-year internship.

Art Therapy Internship Program

Imagine a transformative child-adolescent art therapy internship.
Consider an internship that offers more than 25 hours of advanced practice child art therapy seminars to enhance your base graduate coursework.
In 2019, the Child and Family Art Therapy Center launched our social justice INTERNSHIP PROGRAM. It is an accessible therapy division of CFATC offering individual art therapy in a sliding scale reduced fee structure. This makes high level, previously expensive, private pay art therapy affordable to vulnerable and underserved populations. We recruit the best and brightest rising second/third-year art therapy students for this program.

If you want to emerge from graduate school prepared to provide POWERFUL child-adolescent art therapy, we invite you to join us in the BETTERWORLD ART THERAPY INTERNSHIP.

Brief Internship Overview

The BetterWorld Internship is a 9-month, 700+ hour child & adolescent art therapy internship with a time commitment from September through May. Interns see clients on Sundays, Tuesdays, and Fridays to earn the required hours by the end of the 9-month experience.

Features of the internship:

700+ hours of clinical experience in an outpatient private practice setting during the school year, Child and Family Art Therapy Center, P.C.
A clinical training component offering 25+ hours of direct instruction in advanced practice child-adolescent art therapy, visual cognitive-behavioral coping skills lessons, and integrating parent support & training into child art therapy.
Experience in individual child-centered art therapy experience with parent support and consultation in an outpatient private practice mostly serving children 3-19, with additional opportunities to treat adult and elderly clients, as well.
Weekly individual supervision with an ATR-BC, LPC art therapist
Bonus weekly group supervision with experienced team of private practice art therapists (supervised by an ATR-BC, LPC art therapist)
Collaboration with intern’s graduate program including intern evaluations
Interns provide services at two regional locations: Haverford and Merion PA

Learning Objectives

Interns will explore and learn an integrative and holistic approach to outpatient child art therapy in a family therapy context for the general-psychiatric population, including:

Case management
Collaboration with educators and other professionals in the extended community treatment team
Performing initial Bio-Psycho-Social intake interviews and clinical communication with parents
Family art therapy assessment
Parent-coaching
Child-centered art therapy
Therapeutic storytelling techniques
“Art Therapy in Reverse” (visually communicated cognitive-behavioral coping skills lessons)
Ethical considerations in outpatient therapy settings
Issues in diversity, inclusion, anti-racist, and social justice practices
Specialized strength-based treatment approaches and techniques for neurodivergent children, adolescents, and all ages.
The structure and implementation of a private pay private therapy practice

More Information

About The Internship

The internship offers outpatient therapy work at the Child and Family Art Therapy Center’s ACCESSIBLE THERAPY DIVISION from September through May, during which the intern predominantly works independently. Interns learn and practice an innovative outpatient art therapy model with adolescents and children, “Individual Child Art Therapy in a Family Systems Context”.

25+ hours of live clinical training seminars prepare interns to deliver CFATC’s original individual child art therapy approach in an outpatient setting. “Individual Child Art-Play Therapy in a Family Systems Context” (ATFS) integrates the child’s home and school systems in the treatment process. Pre-internship training interweaves the following theories in psychotherapy:

Individual child-centered engagement with clients
Dynamic, developmental, and trauma-informed case conceptualization
Family systems theory and parent training approaches
An eclectic range of additional theories in psychotherapy (including, but not limited to: CBT, Strength-Based, Person-Centered, Narrative, Solution Focused, Eriksonian Hypnosis principles, ACT, IFS, psychoeducation, etc.)

Pre-internship training teaches interns to implement the unique ATFS four-session assessment procedure:

Verbal Bio-Psycho-Social intake interview with parents
Family art therapy assessment
Individual child art therapy assessment
Parent feedback sessions

Interns learn how to engage resistant caregivers and to deliver clear, meaningful clinical feedback with recommendations to increase safety, structure, and support at home and school.

Interns participate weekly in at least one hour of individual art therapy supervision provided by an ATR-BC, LPC art therapist. They also are invited to participate in weekly professional group supervision with the clinical associates at the Child and Family Art Therapy Center.

Populations Served and Fee Structure

CFATC provides individual therapy for a wide range of challenges of childhood and adolescence, including: trauma, anxiety, anger, depression, oppositional/defiant behavior, parent-child conflict, coping with separation/divorce and other academic and social challenges. CFATC also has a specialty in treating children with neuro-developmental differences, such as Autism, ADHD, and learning disorders.

The Child-Adolescent Internship serves underserved populations who cannot afford expensive private-pay fee-for-service art therapy or may not have health insurance. This program retains a fee-for-service structure, but offers sliding reduced rate therapy fees. Each family will pay what they can afford. According to CFATC philosophy, there must be a token exchange of value for art therapy services. This reciprocal exchange is essential in order for clients to value the therapist’s time and to invest in the therapy process. By offering a reduced cost option for therapy, CFATC expects families from underserved and often marginalized groups to benefit from these innovative, child-friendly approaches to therapy.

Partnership with Graduate Programs

The Child-Adolescent Internship at CFATC communicates and collaborates with the intern’s graduate program as needed, including timely student evaluation and openness to site visits.

Internship Applicant Qualifications

Applicants must attend approved/accredited art therapy graduate programs only. This is not an internship for other professions or treatment modalities. It is not a practicum placement. Applicants must be academically high achieving, a positive contributor to their graduate program community, possess excellent written and oral communication skills, exude self-awareness, emotional self-regulation and maturity, and demonstrate a passion for working with children and adolescents. Applicants must have completed 1st year coursework and all 1st year clinical placements (or their equivalents as approved by BetterWorld internship director in communication with the graduate program) by the start of the BetterWorld Internship. Interns must be available to see clients on Sundays in addition to weekday hours. All staff are required to obtain all federal and state clearances.

CFATC is an equal opportunity employer. All policies and practices will be administered without regard to race, color, creed, age, religion, ancestry, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, marital status or disability.

Application Process

Prospective interns must complete an application and interview process. There is no fee to apply. You must submit:

Cover letter expressing your motivation for applying for this internship, your professional passions and goals
Your current CV/resume
One (1) professional writing sample (graduate level essay/case paper, redacted assessment report)
One (1) recommendation letter from an art therapy graduate program instructor/supervisor who knows your work well

Prospective interns must complete an in-person interview; video conferencing is discouraged and only used as a last resort. Please send only complete applications with all application materials. Interviews will occur and applications will be considered only when all application materials have been received.

Please send application materials to CFATC founder and director, Mike Fogel, in one of two ways: