Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training Program - The purpose of the proposed project is to increase and better distribute the number of MSW graduates and clinical supervisors who are well-trained to provide culturally and linguistically relevant, effective, integrated services for children, adolescents, and youth (CAY) including transitional-aged youth, in the highest need areas of the Bronx. The Bronx is home to some of the poorest congressional districts and highest need HPSA behavioral health shortage areas in NYC, NYS, and the US. As previously successful BHWET grantees, we are well positioned to lead this project. To equip new professional MSWs and their clinical supervisors to address these concerns at the micro-, mezzo-, and macro-levels of practice, we plan educational components that will be both didactic and experiential. Student trainees will: (1) receive a $25,000 as they concentrate on their learning and working with at-risk youth and communities in the final year of their MSW field placement; (2) engage in a full academic year long internship with children, adolescents and youth (CAY); (3) participate in interdisciplinary workshops addressing the effects of social determinants of health (e.g., inter-generational poverty on CAY, structural racism, community and inter-personal violence); (4) take elective course focused on behavioral health with CAY; (5) Participate in a 2-session Fall semester workshop on assessment and screening for trauma and trauma informed treatment; (6) engage in a Spring semester behavioral health for education and health job placement workshop; (7) complete a participatory youth identified intervention addressing age-appropriate digital health literacy; (8) engage in a dual-language clinical practice course section with enhanced content on trauma among CAY in Spanish; (9) apply and obtain NPI #; and (10) receive free support for licensure exam/process by participating in at least 5 licensing preparation sessions through social work department. In order to meet program requirements, experiential learning sites will all be in integrated primary care settings, half of which will be school based health centers. All sites are in high need HPSA shortage areas. Didactic workshops will be offered remotely through live video conferencing, the CAY elective and dual language will be offered hybrid, integrating synchronous and asynchronous distance learning to these course sections. Trainees will work with at least 2 other professional disciplines at their experiential learning sites (e.g., physicians, nurses, dieticians, lawyers, teachers, physical and occupational therapists, speech therapists). Similarly we will work with all of those mentioned disciplines in our inter-disciplinary workshops. The Department of Social Work is situated within the School of Health Sciences, lending itself to myriad interdisciplinary collaboration opportunities, as demonstrated by our previous HRSA BHWET success. Half of our experiential training opportunities will include tele behavioral health and we will add 50% more tele behavioral health training sites over the course of the grant. Trainees will learn practice considerations focused on digital health literacy among CAY of varying ages and complete youth identified intervention projects within the context of their experiential learning internship. Our community education team of CAY trauma experts is poised to implement interdisciplinary didactic workshops to educate community supervisors and faculty as well as trainees. Our experienced HRSA BHWET evaluator will track our trainees progress from the start of the program through two years post completion to obtain employment information and to track program implementation success. We have a successful track record of implementation and sustainability from previous HRSA BHWET projects and plan to sustain enhancements to our course sections, workshops, and student support following the project period.
