Building a Child Mental Health Workforce for the 21st Century: Closing the Training Gap

Of the children and adolescents with mental health concerns who receive treatment, most do so in outpatient community mental health service sites, systems of care which have largely failed to produce significant clinical outcomes. Suggested strategies to improve care in child mental health treatment include improving families' access to services, increasing use of evidence-based practices (EBPs), and holding service sites accountable for demonstrating outcomes. Producing a workforce to implement these strategies will require cultivating providers who have developed specific competencies within a range of agencies that naturally interface with the daily lives of families and their children. The authors report on a recently developed interprofessional child community fellowship for psychiatry residents and psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners aimed at training providers to deliver child mental health services in a variety of community settings. Activities that focus the fellowship are outlined along with the development of the related competencies: EBP translation, collaboration skills, and outcome measurement. Evaluation strategies for fellows' competency development are discussed.