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Projects

Youth Behavioral Health Sub-Committee

The Center for Excellence is coordinating a Youth Behavioral Health Sub-Committee on workforce.   The System of Care Advisory Committee has contracted with the Center to implement HB4151 to research state-issued professional authorization options for current and new behavioral health professions, identify the resources and support needed to maintain a strong youth-centered behavioral health workforce, and focus on behavioral health professions that can improve fair access to behavioral health services as well as the diversity of the workforce to better represent the youth population in Oregon. 


Management Training Project

The Center of Excellence is focused on strengthening the workforce to support the many agencies serving children and families.  One critical element to supporting the workforce is to ensure they have high quality supervision.  We are engaged in a process to gather feedback from staff and managers in agencies to identify the most critical skills needed for their success.  The next step will be to engage with partners to develop a manager training program.

 

Behavioral Health Classroom at Sunset High School

The Oregon Child & Family Center for Excellence received a grant from Cambia Health Foundation in order to work with Sunset High School (Sunset HS) in Beaverton to create a Behavioral Health Career Program for its students. Sunset HS's Behavioral Health Career Technical Education (CTE) program was created with the intention of inspiring and preparing students for careers in behavioral health in a supportive classroom environment that is rooted in relationships and community.

The creation of this program came with the opportunity for the program to have their own classroom space, which the students were able to decorate on their own terms. Their main goal was to create a space that was focused on mental wellbeing and self-care, along with having an area in the middle to allow for open discussion. The hope for the launch of this Behavioral CTE program is to help draw out students who are passionate about entering the behavioral health field and will help close the gap for behavioral health services in Oregon.

 

Principles to Outcomes Driven Practice

In partnership with the Building Bridges Initiative (BBI), the University of Kentucky Center for Innovation in Population Health (IPH Center), and the Oregon Department of Human Services, the Center for Excellence is leading a pilot project to deliver technical assistance and support to residential programs in Oregon. Specifically, the project is designed to test the usefulness of the BBI Theory of Change (TOC) for Residential Interventions developed by the Outcomes Workgroup of BBI. The theory of change was developed using the feedback and input from over 120 individuals, family members and service recipients who work in, with, or for residential programs.

Goals of the pilot project include:

  1. Train and coach residential providers to implement the TOC framework to design, implement and measure program services and interventions.
  2. Assess the impact of using the TOC framework to initiate and implement change processes in residential programs.
  3. Assess outcomes at the client, program, and community levels implemented through use of the TOC framework.
  4. Generate awareness of transformational practices in residential interventions.

Five organizations are participating in the project: Nexus Family Healing, Parrott Creek, A Village for One, Madrona Recovery, and St. Mary’s Home for Boys. Based on a self-assessment, each agency will identify and implement program enhancements, receive consultation and technical assistance on innovations, outcome measurements, family and youth involvement, and stakeholder engagement.

 

Building the Lived Experience Workforce

In recent years, much attention has been paid to the many ways that providers can benefit from the knowledge and insights offered by staff with lived experience. However, far less emphasis has been placed on navigating the challenges that sometimes come along with having (or being) a team member whose personal story reflects those of the communities they serve. In response, the Center for Excellence has partnered with a handful of Oregon Alliance member organizations to research strategies to better learn from and support staff with lived experience.

After conducting a literature review into best practices for organizations seeking to hire and train staff with lived experiences, we developed a survey intended for staff and their supervisors—with and without lived experience—that we hope will help us better understand the nature and scope the challenges faced by organizations and their employees. We plan to present the findings from this survey—as well as a status update on the next steps we’ve taken in response to those findings—at our Annual Summit in May.

Even if you/your organization did not participate in the development of the survey, we encourage you to give the link to your staff. The survey is anonymous, and respondents don’t have to indicate which organization they work for if they don’t want to. If you would like to participate but have questions about the survey (or how the findings will be used), please feel free to contact us at [email protected]

Survey Link: https://forms.gle/vMsVEm3G1kdrHCh57 

 

BRS Aftercare

In the second half of 2022, the Center began a contract with ODHS’s Office of Child Welfare to identify opportunities for improvement within the Behavioral Rehabilitation Services (BRS) program—specifically as it pertains to aftercare services. Following an extensive review of existing literature on best practices for aftercare in BRS or BRS-adjacent programs across the country, we conducted a series of interviews with BRS provider staff (ranging from program directors to direct care staff). We then merged this provider feedback with findings pulled from other aftercare efforts to create a set of recommendations for ODHS.

In response to our findings, ODHS plans to include hourly transition service contract language and funding to support strategies above and beyond OAR requirements in the next contract amendment cycle. We hope to continue working with ODHS as they begin the next phase of this work. In the future, we plan to engage BRS children, youth, and families, draft an implementation approach for a revised aftercare model, or create a low-burden self-evaluation tool for providers to assess the efficacy of their own aftercare programs.