Practicum Placements
Students at Flora
Practicum and field placements at Flora Foundations
We take students on purpose, and we do it properly.
A placement should not be a year of shadowing, filing, and hoping someone has a spare fifteen minutes for you. Training the next round of clinicians is real work, and it deserves real hours.
Students at Flora get supervision that is scheduled, protected, and treated as clinical time rather than something squeezed between sessions. If we can't offer a student that, we don't take the student. We would rather say no than waste a year of someone's education.
Who we consider
We review inquiries from students in:
Master of Social Work (MSW) programs, foundation and advanced year
Bachelor of Social Work (BSW) programs
Master's level counselling programs, including Yorkville University's Master of Arts in Counselling Psychology (MACP)
Nurse Practitioner students with a mental health focus, when we have an NP preceptor available
We're welcoming our first Yorkville University MACP practicum students in January 2027. If you're a Yorkville student looking at Newfoundland and Labrador for your placement, we'd love to hear from you early.
Placements at Flora are competitive. We are a small team, we cap the number of students at any one time deliberately, and availability depends on which of our clinicians has capacity to supervise in a given term. Every inquiry gets a careful read, and not every strong applicant will get a spot.
What a placement here actually looks like
Clinical supervision that's on the calendar. Weekly individual supervision with your primary supervisor, plus team consultation. We use that time for case conceptualization, ethics, documentation, scope-of-practice decisions, and the parts of the work that are hard to say out loud. You will be asked what you're thinking and why. That's the point.
A caseload that builds slowly. Students begin by observing and co-facilitating, then move toward their own clients as readiness allows. Nobody gets handed eight clients in week two.
Exposure to ADHD and autism assessment. Flora's team includes Newfoundland and Labrador's first Registered Social Workers conducting comprehensive ADHD and autism assessments. Depending on your program's scope and your supervisor's judgment, students may observe clinical interviews, learn the measures we use, sit in on feedback sessions, and watch how a clinically defensible diagnostic impression gets built. Scoring, interpretation, and diagnostic decisions stay with the supervising clinician.
Trauma-informed, neuro-affirming clinical practice. Our clinicians work from EMDR, Internal Family Systems, CBT, DBT, and narrative frameworks. A placement does not certify you in EMDR or IFS; that is separate training with its own requirements. What you will get is exposure to how the models are used in practice, and a working understanding of the pacing, stabilization, and relational groundwork that has to be in place before any of it works.
How a clinic actually runs. Intake, consent, clinical documentation, direct billing and insurance, scheduling, no-shows, boundaries, when to consult, and when to refer out. Most programs don't teach this. It's most of the job.
What we look for
Because spots are limited, we are selective. Grades and program standing matter, but they are not what decides it. Here is what we are actually looking for:
Readiness for real clinical work. You have enough coursework and self-awareness behind you to sit with clients, and you know the edges of your scope.
Curiosity over certainty. "I don't know, help me think about this" is a better answer than a confident wrong one.
Willingness to be supervised. Feedback here is direct and it is kind. Both. If direct feedback is hard for you right now, it is worth knowing that before you start rather than in month three.
Steadiness with difficult material. Trauma, family conflict, kids in crisis, and adults who have been dismissed and misread for decades.
A real interest in neurodivergent clients. We push back on the idea that ADHD is trendy. It isn't. It's a backlog of missed, misunderstood, and unsupported people finally being taken seriously, and we want students who understand the difference.
Professionalism in the unglamorous parts. Showing up, writing your notes, meeting deadlines, and keeping confidentiality airtight.
Commitment to the full placement. Clients build relationships with the clinicians they see. We look for students who can commit to the whole term and see their work through.
The practical details
Placement dates, required hours, and learning objectives are set in partnership with your school's field education office.
We require a current certificate of conduct and vulnerable sector check, proof of student liability insurance through your program, and a signed field agreement between Flora Foundations and your institution.
In-person, hybrid, and fully virtual placements are considered, depending on supervisor availability that term.
How to reach out
Email hello@florafoundations.ca with "Practicum Inquiry" in the subject line. Please include:
Your name, program, school, and year of study
Your placement term and required hours
Your field education coordinator's name and contact information
A short note on what you're hoping to learn and why Flora specifically
Your resume
We read every inquiry and reply either way. If we don't have supervision capacity for your term, we'll tell you plainly instead of leaving you waiting on a maybe.
If you're a student who wants to be taught rather than just placed, we'd like to hear from you.