Workforce Development Trainings
The Center of Excellence is equipped to provide a variety of behavioral health trainings to increase mental health literacy among the general population and to support provider organizations and state partners in advancing the behavioral health workforce. Trainers are certified in national curriculum and also have developed customized trainings to meet emergent needs of professionals. Continuing education units are available for all trainings.
To learn more about specific trainings or to schedule trainings at your organization, please reach out to the training team at [email protected].
National Trainings
Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk
Overview: The Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk training, developed by the Zero Suicide Institute, helps clinical professionals to feel confident providing compassionate care to people at risk for suicide. challenge their personal biases, provide a framework to determine client risk for suicide, and to make relevant and meaningful treatment decisions. The training provides a research-informed risk formulation model for the provider to navigate challenging conversations and develop a collaborative treatment and safety plan.
Training details: The Assessing and Managing Suicide Risk training is intended for health care professionals (licensed and nonlicensed) and direct care staff in outpatient, inpatient, and substance use disorder treatment settings. The training is delivered over two days either in-person or virtually.
Overview: Reducing access to lethal means, such as firearms and medication, can determine whether a person at risk for suicide lives or dies. This course focuses on how to reduce access to the methods people use to kill themselves. It covers how to: 1) identify people who could benefit from lethal means counseling, 2) ask about their access to lethal methods, and 3) work with them—and their families—to reduce access.
Training details: Counseling on Access to Lethal Means (CALM) is intended for suicide prevention for adults. The training is for professionals, including clinicians, or the general public. This training can be offered virtually or in-person.
Overview: Mental Health First Aid is a public education program that introduces participants to risk factors and warning signs of mental health problems, builds understanding of their impact, and overviews appropriate supports. This training uses role playing and simulations to demonstrate how to offer initial help in a mental health crisis and to connect people to the appropriate professional, peer, social, and self- help care. The program also teaches common risk factors and warning signs of specific illnesses like anxiety, depression, substance use, bipolar disorder, eating disorders, and schizophrenia.
Training details: There are specific modules designed for adults, youth, and teens. Completion of this training results in a certificate.
- Adult Mental Health First Aid trains any adult — lay or professional — to recognize the signs or symptoms of a mental health crisis or concern. There is a general training, as well as population-specific supplements for veterans, first responders, older adults, and those working in higher education. The training totals eight hours and be delivered in-person or hybrid format.
- Youth Mental Health First Aid is intended for any adult that has contact with youth (e.g., coaches, teachers, clergy, etc.) to recognize the signs and symptoms of mental health concerns in youth. This training totals 6.5 years and can be delivered in-person or in a hybrid format.
- Teen Mental Health First Aid is intended for youth ages 13 to 17 to recognize the signs and symptoms in their peers or themselves. This training consists of three 90-minute sessions or six 45-minute sessions.
Overview: High Fidelity Wraparound is a comprehensive process that builds an individualized team to organize resources and services to support children and their families. As part of the wraparound process, a team is brought together around all the components of a family’s life incorporating their history, culture, relationships, and other relevant information to address their challenges and formulate possible solutions. The strength-based, family-driven approach is focused on developing self-sufficiency, building natural support, and increasing a family’s ability to seek care and respond to crises.
Training details: This training is delivered in a series to ensure consistent skill development for the practitioner to translate quality service delivery to families. The training is intended for care management entity staff, including care coordinators, wrap supervisors, certified peer specialists, and organizational leadership. The training is instructor-led (virtually or in-person) over three days, with self-directed, online prework.
Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy
Overview: Recovery-Oriented Cognitive Therapy (CT-R) is a treatment modality that combines the evidence base of cognitive therapy with principles of the recovery movement to move an individual toward the life of their choosing. The protocol was originally designed for individuals living with schizophrenia or schizophrenia spectrum disorders; however, it has been applied to a variety of serious mental health challenges.
CT-R relies on a high level of collaboration between the provider and individual. The protocol is based on the behavioral health provider developing a detailed understanding of the individual and the negative beliefs that block them from their aspirations and then developing a treatment strategy that flows from this understanding. The individual’s personal aspirations are the central focus of this collaboration and the primary motivator to take steps and address challenges.
CT-R is effectively applied in a variety of treatment settings including residential programs, hospitals, crisis stabilization units, psychosocial rehabilitation programs, and outpatient programs. Duration of treatment typically ranges from 12 to 24 months.
Training details: Any professional working in a mental health setting (including nonclinical peer specialists and case managers) can be trained in CT-R, which can be used as a treatment method in adults, children, and adolescents.
This training consists of a three-day, in-person workshop followed by six months of weekly, one-hour, virtual consultation to assist providers with case conceptualization and applying the CT-R protocol to the individuals they are currently serving. Consultation is part of the training. The training can be provided as a virtual workshop in twice weekly three-hour sessions lasting three weeks.
Overview: Sources of Strength is a best practice youth prevention intervention designed to harness the power of peer social networks to change unhealthy norms and culture, and to ultimately enable young people to better deal with life stressors. This is done by increasing help-seeking behaviors and promoting connections between peers and caring adults. Sources of Strength moves beyond a singular focus on risk factors and uses an upstream approach for youth well-being and suicide prevention. Building support (protective factors) around young people, provide strengths they can rely on when times get hard.
Training details: Youth (middle and high school) within school systems or community programs (e.g., Boys and Girls Club, YMCA, etc.) are trained as peer leaders and trusted adults within these settings are trained as adult advisors that can assist the youth in initiating campaigns that build mental wellness and strengths. This training can be delivered in-person or virtually over approximately five hours.
Trauma-Informed Systems
Overview: A trauma-informed system is one in which all participating stakeholders recognize and respond to the impact of traumatic stress on those who have contact with the child involved in the welfare, justice, educational, or health and behavioral health systems, including children, families and caregivers, and service providers.
This training is designed to teach professionals in the child-serving system basic knowledge, skills, and values about working with children who have experienced traumatic events, and how to use this knowledge to support children’s safety, permanency, and well-being through trauma-informed practice. The training enables professionals working in programs and agencies within such systems to infuse and sustain trauma awareness, knowledge, and skills into their organizational cultures, practices, and policies. They act in collaboration with all those who are involved with the child to facilitate and support the recovery and resiliency of the child and family.
Training details: Trauma-informed systems training is geared toward professionals working in child-serving organizations in the health or behavioral health, welfare, educational, and justice systems. The training occurs in a one-day virtual or in-person format.
Transition to Independence Process Model
Overview: The Transition to Independence Process (TIP) Model is an evidence-supported practice that prepares youth and young adults (ages 14 to 29) with emotional and/or behavioral disorders in their movement toward greater self-sufficiency and successful achievement of their goals. This training is designed to improve real-life outcomes across the domains of education, employment, career, housing, and community life functioning.
Training details: TIP Model trainings are designed for front-line staff, supervisors, and management personnel; youth and peer mentors; and community stakeholders. The one-day training can be delivered in-person or virtually.
Center of Excellence-Developed Trainings
Difficult Conversations
Overview: Center of Excellence developed this training to support front-line staff who perform interviews, focus groups, and other first-person information gathering as part of their work. This training expands understanding of how to use motivational interviewing to have difficult conversations.
Training details: The Difficult Conversations training is intended for front-line professionals who conduct interviews to gather information or as part of intake for their work. The training lasts four hours and can be delivered in-person or virtually.
Mental Wellness
Overview: The Center of Excellence developed this training in response to the COVID-19 pandemic to reinforce the need for self-care. The Mental Wellness training provides a proactive strategy to strengthen one’s mental, emotional, social, and psychological well-being. This training fosters thinking, feeling, and acting in ways that creates a positive impact on one’s physical and social well-being. The training content includes defining mental wellness and understanding the different aspects of mental wellness through discussion, activities and developing coping strategies.
Training details: This training is intended for all adults, regardless of their profession. It is delivered in either a six-hour virtual or in-person format.
Secondary Traumatic Stress
Overview: Secondary traumatic stress is the emotional duress that results when an individual constantly hears about the firsthand trauma experiences of another. Secondary traumatic stress presents with symptoms identical to those of post-traumatic stress disorder. The Center of Excellence, in conjunction with the Georgia State University School of Social Work, developed this training to support direct care professionals that work with traumatized populations and who are at an increased risk for experiencing secondary traumatic stress. This training introduces participants to the similarities and differences between burnout, compassion fatigue, secondary and vicarious trauma, and will offer information about how to identify these in symptoms themselves and others, as well as development of an active self-care plan.
Training details: The Secondary Traumatic Stress Training is available to any working professional that may experience secondary traumatic stress, including front line workers. The curriculum can be tailored to meet the needs of specific topics of interest in varied organizational settings, including maternal and child health, community mental health, crisis units, and residential treatment. The two-hour training is instructor-led and can be delivered in-person or virtually.
Trauma-Informed University
Overview: The Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities and the Mindworks Georgia collaborative (formerly the Interagency Directors Team), in partnership with the Center of Excellence for Children’s Behavioral Health and Voices for Georgia’s Children, jointly developed and implemented Trauma-Informed University training. The Trauma-Informed University training equips emerging behavioral health professionals to recognize and prevent triggers for clients who have experienced traumatic life events. Building this baseline understanding of trauma better prepares students for their field work. The training defines trauma, identifies reactions to trauma, and builds understanding resiliency in the face of trauma.
Training details: This three-hour training can be delivered in-person or virtually and is intended for students preparing for a field practicum or internship, including graduate-level students in counseling, social work, and nursing.