Santa Cruz County Behavioral Health.

What it is

The organization, from its own site.

The county behavioral-health system serving nearly 300,000 residents through outpatient clinics, clinical and forensic programs, acute and subacute services, substance-use services and field-based care. Its student program places graduate MFT and MSW students at North County Behavioral Health in Santa Cruz and South County Behavioral Health in Watsonville.

Its site: santacruzhealth.org.

What its site publishes about training

A program its own pages describe.

Each statement below is what the organization’s own site said on 20 August 2026, with the page it said it on. A program existing on a page is not a seat existing today — the page is where you check.

The Student Internship Program page limits placements to graduate students enrolled in MFT or MSW programs and requires the school to hold, or be willing to enter, an MOU with the county. The page that says so →

The published schedule is 16–24 hours a week for the academic year. Individual and weekly group supervision are included in the schedule, and clinical caseloads generally build to 7–10 client hours a week. The page that says so →

Traditional placements are unpaid and vary in number by year. Paid participation is limited to existing county Behavioral Health employees in the Mental Health Client Specialist classification; the page warns that county hiring runs separately from the academic calendar. The page that says so →

Before you write to anyone

The three questions that protect your hours.

A trainee cannot count hours from a private practice or a professional corporation — § 4980.43.3 draws that line, and the trainee rules page walks all seven of the rules that decide whether a placement counts. A registered associate has a wider map; both start from the same three questions: who signs the supervision paperwork and on what schedule, which settings the hours would come from, and — for a trainee — whether your program’s site agreement exists yet, because § 4980.42 puts that agreement on your school, not on you.

The whole search method — whose job the search is, the order that saves cycles, and the paper trail to keep — is on the how-to-find-a-practicum-site page. This profile is one shelf of it; the full Bay Area shelves are the practicum-sites directory and the associate-employers directory.

Where every figure came from

Sources.

This profile records what the organization’s own site published on the read date, and nothing else. It is not a statement about today, it is not an endorsement, and it is not legal advice. Sites change; the links above are where to check.