Please Select Special Topics Best Practices Children and Families Competencies Cultural Competencies and Disparity Issues Evidence-Based Teaching Persons in Recovery and Families Rural Workforce Issues Severe Mental Illness Supervision and Mentoring Substance Use Disorders Training and Development

February 26, 2010

Behavioral Health Pacesetter Award - Call for Nominations

To apply for the Behavioral Health Pacesetter Award please click on the E-News section of the Annapolis Coalition website and open E-News for March 31, 2010.  A “Call for Nominations” and applicant “Submission Form” are available for your use.  Applicants should respond by May 14, 2010.

 

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The Annapolis Coalition and The Hitachi Foundation Partner to Identify Exemplary Workforce Practices in Behavioral Health

The Hitachi Foundation grant will help identify improved workforce practices at mental health and substance use treatment organizations.

The Annapolis Coalition on the Behavioral Health Workforce has received a grant from The Hitachi Foundation to discover and analyze emerging workforce best practices at mental health and substance use treatment and prevention centers.  At the end of the process, they will honor outstanding organizations with the Behavioral Health Pacesetter Award for best practices in support of direct care workers.

“It is a challenge to develop programs that effectively serve the needs of front line workers at these facilities,” said Gail Stuart, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Annapolis Coalition. “We recognize that the work they are doing is extremely important. The clients they serve deserve quality services from competent and experienced staff and excellence from the organizations that provide those supports and services. We are very excited to be working with the Hitachi Foundation on this project."

“Better Jobs, Better Services, and Better Business” is a year-long project designed to identify and recognize the achievements of organizations that measurably demonstrate all three core criteria:

·         Improved workforce practices that strengthen business performance and bottom line results, and;

·         Improved work life, skills, and economic advancement among direct support employees, and;

·         Improved client outcomes based on the organization’s delivery of high quality services and supports.

“Our priority is to demonstrate the business case for investing in the training and development of the direct service work force,” said Barbara Dyer, President and CEO of The Hitachi Foundation. “We selected the Annapolis Coalition for this project because of their outstanding record of identifying and documenting innovative solutions to the behavioral health work force crisis, and we are delighted to be working with them.”

The direct support workforce is the backbone of service delivery in all healthcare sectors, and yet these workers are often the least trained and lowest paid. The Annapolis Coalition has made the training and development of the direct support workforce a focus of its efforts in recent years, and this partnership is a natural extension of that concentration.

During the coming months, The Annapolis Coalition will reach out to a broad range of employer organizations to identify those that demonstrate success across the three criteria.  A small number will be formally recognized, and their successful strategies highlighted nationally.  The goal is to shed light on promising innovations, to prominently recognize exemplary employers, and to promote the replication and dissemination of these successful business practices.

For additional information, contact Wayne F. Dailey, PhD, Project Coordinator for the Annapolis Coalition, at waynedailey7@gmail.com or call (860) 754-6967.

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