Families, Illness & Collaborative Healthcare Offerings

Families, Illness, and Collaborative Healthcare Doctoral Fellowships
CCFH offers fellowships for pre- and post-doctoral mental health professionals and Ph.D. candidates enrolled in marriage and family therapy doctoral programs who seek to satisfy their internship requirement. Applicants should have a strong career development interest in the integration of family systems approaches in healthcare. The clinical experience emphasizes work with chronic or life-threatening illness, disability, and loss using family, couples, group/multi-family group and individual modalities.

Our Center provides courses and individual and group supervision. The program also includes placements at Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center Department of Family Practice and the Division of Integrative Medicine and the Center for Compassion in Healthcare at Evanston Northwestern Healthcare. Responsibilities include participation in multidisciplinary teaching conferences, teaching residents and medical students about the integration of family systems approaches in varied healthcare settings, and collaboration with healthcare providers. Fellows can develop or join ongoing clinical research projects related to families and healthcare.

Click here for the flyer.


Advanced Certificate Program Specialization
Health and mental health professionals, including physicians, social workers, nurses, psychologists, counselors, and marriage and family therapists, may enroll in CCFH's Advanced Certificate Program. This program offers a second year specialized track in "Families, Illness & Collaborative Healthcare." Courses provide a resilience-based family approach for 1) working with illness and disability; 2) working with special populations (e.g. people with diabetes, cancer, or dementia); and 3) approaches to helping families cope with death and loss. Courses may be taken individually as well. Please see the Advanced Certificate Program and Courses sections for more information.


Clinical Supervision
Group supervision is offered for professionals working in healthcare, social service, or private practice settings with families facing serious illness, disability, and loss. Participants discuss their cases with expert CCFH faculty and benefit from group feedback. The format includes case presentation, review of videotaped sessions, role-play, and one-way mirror observation of live interviews. See Supervision Groups for additional information.


Summer Institute
CCFH offers an intensive Summer Institute every June. This program attracts professionals nationwide and internationally who learn a family-based, collaborative clinical approach to help families meet the challenges of chronic and life-threatening health problems. The format is ideally suited for professionals seeking valuable knowledge and skills in a concentrated period of time away from work commitments. Click here for the Summer Institute flyer.


Community Consultation Services
CCFH provides in-service training and engages in collaborative projects with community-based health, mental health and social service organizations. We provide the staff with effective methods for fostering healthy family functioning in the face of serious illness. The ultimate goal is to promote systemic change, incorporating family-centered practices in program planning and implementation. CCFH has provided consultation services for a variety of organizations in Chicago including: Children's Memorial Hospital, Illinois Masonic Hospital, and Gilda's Club Chicago. For additional information, see Community Programs.


Counseling Services
Expert counseling services are available for individuals, couples and families coping with chronic illness, life-threatening illness, or disability. For more information, please see Counseling & Therapy.