October
2001

Workforce Development: Ensuring Competency in Public Mental Health

The public mental health systems of the West are challenged continuously to ensure the accessibility and availability of quality services. In a region that is defined by vast spaces, expanding urban environments, and diverse people this challenge is both complex and massive. A key element of ensuring quality services is the education and training of a workforce that possesses the core competencies required to meet the demands of public mental health practice. Concentration on workforce development has been central to the WICHE Mental Health mission since its founding in 1955.

Numerous studies have shown individuals graduating from core mental health professional training programs (e.g. psychiatry, psychology, social work) often do not have the skills, knowledge, or attitudes to meet the needs of persons served by the public mental health systems in the West. WICHE work in the 1980s and early 1990s revealed a very real deficiency in the relevance of higher education's curriculum to public mental health practice. For example, in 1985 the majority of mental health professional training programs surveyed in 13 western states self-rated their programs as "less than good" in preparing their students to serve the priority populations of the public mental health system. More recently, the WICHE Mental Health Program illuminated the core cultural competencies required for effective practice with minority populations. Again, education and training programs often fall short in preparing their students.

Today's public mental health systems are awash in dynamic change. From managed care to evidence-based practice, the way care is organized and delivered is changing rapidly and radically. At a time when public mental health systems are organizing and deploying Assertive Community Treatment Teams, too many mental health professionals are entering the system with workplace expectations more in sync with the old Bob Newhart show. Some ways we can address this dilemma are to:

• Develop and support Training Partnerships, Internships, and Residencies.
• Identify core competencies for public mental health practice, and implement continuing education programs that support staff development in these competencies.
• Hold regular meetings between public mental health and higher education officials.
• Initiate dialogue at the local higher education level, express the public mental health needs, and reward through recognition those entities that respond.
• Grow our own professionals, by establishing employee scholarship/loan programs to encourage public mental health employees to seek advanced training.