-
Let’s Celebrate Our Workforce
Every day when he left home to serve as the attending psychiatrist at an inpatient unit at a general hospital, he wondered whether he would contract COVID at work that day and bring it home to his wife and two small children. Maybe he had already brought it home. Had stripping in the garage and...
-
From Crisis to Connection: Meeting the Workforce Shortage Head On
The workforce shortage has been felt keenly in the behavioral health field (BHECON, 2018). To effectively address this shortage, we must identify its root causes, understand dynamics that result in staff resignation decisions and connect the perceived impact on business sustainability while...
-
Help Wanted! Now More Than Ever
A 2016 report of the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) offered a bleak depiction of the current and future state of the nation’s behavioral health services workforce. Nearly half the American population resides in a designated Mental Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA), and...
-
A Dedicated but Neglected Workforce: A Clarion Call for Change
The social service agencies on which vulnerable New Yorkers depend rely heavily on the state government for financial support inasmuch as they act as extensions of it in fulfilling many responsibilities that would otherwise be borne by the public sector. Nevertheless, the period following the Great...
-
Addressing the Human Services Workforce Crisis Through Training and Professional Development
In 2017, the President’s Committee for People with Intellectual Disabilities provided a report (retrieved from https://www.nadsp.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/PCPID-2017_-Americas-Direct-Support-Workforce-Crisis-low-res.pdf) to the President of the United States regarding the workforce crisis...
-
Meeting the Workforce Challenge at Outreach
As behavioral health care providers confront the unrelenting opioid epidemic, in an environment of rapidly evolving reforms in health delivery and payment systems, one theme continues to resonate: the importance of a vital workforce. It comes as no surprise that compounding the reality of systems...
-
The Experience of Workplace Stress and Compassion Satisfaction of Licensed Social Workers
Employed in fast-paced, often poorly funded agencies and working with clients who have experienced significant traumas, many licensed social workers are believed to experience a high degree of stress. At the same time, many feel emotionally fulfilled by their work and experience “compassion...
-
The Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis: Past, Present, and Future
First on the list of topics for this issue of Behavioral Health News was “The Workforce Crisis Today.” That’s interesting because the workforce “crisis” is anything but new. For example, when I first entered this field during the height of deinstitutionalization in New York—the early...
-
Self-Care is Essential to Well-being at Work
By now, “self-care” and “workplace wellness” aren’t novel concepts. It would be difficult not to find myriad references to both in the popular and professional press. Many organizations, including in the private sector, healthcare and government have embraced employee wellness programs,...
-
Staff Development at the Mental Health Association of Westchester
In recent editions of Behavioral Health News, we have written of sweeping transformations in services offered at The Mental Health Association of Westchester (MHA). These transformations require critical staff development - learning new skills and new processes of working. To manage these changes,...
