Student placements

Given the increasing number of older adults in Australia, psychologists, social workers and other mental health professionals need to know how to provide counselling and assessment services to older adults.

There are numerous issues that are prevalent for older adults and their families, such as grief and loss, moving into residential aged care, managing life transitions (e.g. retirement and role changes), stress related to caring for others, dementia, and coping with medical problems.

Our placements

While there are excellent employment opportunities in the aged care for mental health professionals, there are only few opportunities for training in this specialised field.

Swinburne's Wellbeing Clinic for Older Adults is the largest university-based training clinic in aged care and mental health. We train students from across Australia. Placements are available for postgraduate students studying psychology, social work or counselling.

The minimum period of commitment for these placements is six months at one day a week. Students may require a longer period of commitment to accumulate their required hours of clinical contact. Students can also choose to spend more than one day a week on placement.

The placement offers students the opportunity to provide psychological treatment and counselling to aged care residents, families and staff. Services are offered face-to-face, by telehealth or both formats. The clinic also runs several group programs. Appointments with clients are made through mutual negotiation between students and the client.

We provide individual and group supervision, as well as education webinars to support students in their placements.