Competent poverty training.

Despite numerous calls to the discipline, attention to poverty and social class remains minimal in psychology even though most human experience is significantly affected by social ranking. As a result, educators lack models for training in the context of poverty. Recent and concerted efforts to define and implement competency-based models for the practice of professional psychology have resulted in the creation of Competency Benchmarks (American Psychological Association, 2011). Here, these Competency Benchmarks frame the integration of best practices in working with poor and working-class clients with what we know about what constitutes good training. The result is a competency-based approach for those who are training psychologists-to-be to work effectively with economically challenged clients.