University of Washington Workforce
Development Task Force

Goal
Improve the preparation of University of Washington students to provide and support evidence based practices (EBPs) for children’s mental health (CMH) when they graduate to the workforce in WA State.

Funding
This project is funded as part of the Evidence Based Practice Institute created as part of WA State HB-1088.  Long-term funding is unknown but likely to be a combination of external and university funding.

General Background
Currently the UW has undergraduate and graduate programs in a number of schools who form much of the workforce for Children’s Mental Health (CMH).  These include:

• School of Social Work - Graduate and Undergraduate
• College of Arts and Sciences - Psychology Department
• School of Nursing - Dept of Psychosocial and Community Health, Infant Mental Health in Development, and Family and Child Nursing
• School of Medicine - Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Department – Psychiatry Residents, Psychology Interns, and Psychiatry Child Fellows
• School of Medicine - Pediatrics Department
• College of Education - Educational Psychology, Special Education, Teachers Education Program (elementary and secondary education)
• School of Law

These schools and programs have a very limited curriculum with regard to Children’s Mental Health Evidence Based Practices (CMH-EBPs) and thus their graduates are not prepared to provide these treatments as part of the WA state workforce.

There are three groups for whom training in CMH-EBPs is relevant:

• Those providing the CMH-EBPs (aka Providers)
• Those who will be overseeing or working in close collaboration with the CMH-EBPs (aka “Coordinators of Care”)
• Those identifying the need for and recommending CMH-EBPs but not overseeing or collaborating closely with the treatment providers (aka Referrers) (Referrers include: parents and families, pediatricians and other medical providers, children’s services staff, judges and other justice personnel, teachers, principals, and other school personnel.)  Referrers do not need to be able to implement the CMH-EBP but do need to know
• What they are
• For whom and for what are they effective
• Any contra-indications and other inherent limitations
• How to do know if the version provided is of sufficient quality and quantity

Assumptions

• The initial phase of the UW Workforce project focuses on providing coordinated didactic training for all three groups above.  While supervised practice in the CMH-EBPs will be crucial, this will be developed in later phases of this project.

• The initial phase also focuses at the graduate level.  Again, training for undergraduates in all fields is important as they often are the WA workforce, this will be developed in later phases of the project.

• To assist UW graduates to implement CMH-EBPs in their careers, it is important these graduates are trained in the underlying skills that cut across CMH-EBPs. By learning underlying skills, specific CMH-EBPs can be learned more effectively and efficiently than if each CMH-EBP training must also teach these basic skills in addition to EBP-specific skills. Examples of these key areas are the principles and strategies of effective parenting skills, CBT, assessment of children for match of problem to CMH-EBP, motivational engagement of patients and families for the treatment across different settings (e.g. schools, foster homes, juvenile justice, etc.), and working with extreme and complex cases in an outpatient environment.

• Children’s mental health is a multi-disciplinary endeavor which will be enhanced by providing training in a multi-disciplinary format – therefore trainees from all schools and programs will be trained together.

Initial Projects

Graduate level UW seminar for Providers (and some Coordinators of Care):

• A 4 quarter graduate academic course series on Children’s Mental Health EBP (CMH-EBPs) with two workshops has been developed to provide training in these areas
• The goal of this certificate series is to provide the knowledge and skills underlying the majority of CMH-EBPs:

• Effective parenting skills and effective methods of training parents in these skills
• Behavior modification, behavior therapy, and cognitive therapy skills
• Parental attachment and infant mental health interventions
• Assessment of which CMH-EBP is needed and appropriate, if any
• Motivational strategies for engaging children and families in CMH-EBPs
• Clinical and systems interventions to help children and adolescents with complex and extreme disorders

• Issues of diversity (cultural, gender, rural/urban, sexual orientation, etc.) will be meaningfully integrated throughout each seminar.
• Each topic area will be paired with training in a specific CMH-EBP to assure students have training in interventions likely to be used by WA state providers:

• Helping the Noncompliant Child (HNC)
• Trauma-Focused CBT (TF-CBT)
• Coping Cat
• Motivational Interviewing (MI)
• Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT)
• Family Integrated Transition (FIT)

  Quarter	Course or 2-day Workshop	CMH-EBP to be trained
  Summer	Behavior modification, behavior therapy, and cognitive therapy skills - PSY 543	Trauma Focused CBT and Coping Cat
  Fall	Effective Parenting Interventions - PSY 543	Helping the Non-Compliant Child
  Fall	2-day Workshop on Assessment Tools for Matching Children and Families for CMH-EBPs	Assessment to be decided
  Winter	Clinical and Systems Interventions for Complex and Extreme Disorders	To be decided
  Winter	2-day Workshop on Motivating Children and Families to Participate in Treatment	Motivational Interviewing
  Spring	Using Infant Mental Health Approaches in Practice Settings - NSG 538	Promoting First Relationships

UW Lecture Series for Referrers, Coordinators of Care, and Providers:

• We are developing a year long series of lectures covering areas where CMH-EBPs play an important role.

Confirmed lecture topics:

• Evidence Based Practice in the Real World: What's New and What's Working - April 2009 - Lucy Berliner, MSW
• Matching EBPs to the Problems of Children and Families: Innovative projects and practical strategies on how to refer - May 2009 - Shannon Dorsey, Ph.D. & Suzanne Kerns, Ph.D.
• Using Evidence Based Interventions with Culturally Diverse Children and Families: Evidence and strategies for engagement - October 2009 - David Stewart, Ph.D.

Proposed lecture topics:

• EBPs for conduct problems/aggression in youth
• EBPs for anxiety and traumatized children and youth
• EBPs for younger non-compliant children
• EBPs for depression
• EBPs for suicidal and high risk behavior
• EBPs for attention deficit disorder
• EBPs for substance abuse and addiction problems

• This series is offered at the School of Social Work in room 305 - "Social Work Commons"
• Lectures are geared to Referrers and Coordinators of Care and we offer Continuing Education Credits to encourage wide attendance
• Lectures are attentive to the needs of UW faculty and students but are open to the public at large

Future Projects

Undergraduate level UW seminar for Providers (and some Coordinators of Care):

• Many of the CMH clients seen in public mental health in WA state are actually seen by undergraduate trained clinicians and many of them will be asked to implement CMH-EBPs
• Once a model has been developed at the graduate level, modifications for an undergraduate level will be explored and piloted

Practicum Opportunities for Providers (and some Coordinators of Care):

• To supplement the didactic course work, it will be critical for the students to be provided an opportunity to implement the CMH-EBPs they are learning with close supervision
• This stage will require the identification of both potential sites and supervisors as well as confronting the different requirements for each discipline’s practicum supervision

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