NNews-July-2023

To learn more about the Education Council and join this group, please contact Shauna Moses, NJAMHAA’s Vice President, Public Affairs and Member Services, at smoses@njamhaa.org. 25 July 2023 Education Council Helps Build Career Paths and the Behavioral Healthcare Workforce “NJAMHAA’s Education Council fosters essential communication and collaboration between agencies, which have the need for clinical professionals, and schools, which have the solution as they develop that expertise in their students,” said Lisa Lawson, MBA, MSW, LCSW, Chief Outreach & Engagement Officer, Trenton Health Team, who has been co-chairing the Education Council since 2020, when she was Director of Clinical and IntegratedHealth at Catholic Charities, Diocese of Trenton (CCT). “Providers say they don’t have time to have interns. That’smore reason to join the council and learn how tomatch opportunities for interns and the agencies,” Lawson said. “Relationships between agencies and schools can be soup to nuts, from Bachelor’s level to graduate school. Providers don’t have to call every school every year because they will know the quality students whowill graduate from the schools. For colleges and universities, building relationships withmultiple providers is equally valuable.” “There’s a positive give and take. Providers need to know where their future employees could come from, and universities want to give the best education by providing hands-on experience,” said Education Council Co-chair Nora Barrett, MSW, LCSW, CPRP, Associate Professor and Vice Chair, Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Counseling Professions, Rutgers School of Health Professions (SHP). “Every year, our clinical coordinators call the same agencies to find out how many placements we can fill for them. An excellent strategy for agencies to hire people is to give full-time positions to graduating interns who already know the organizations and jobs.” “We have to look at interns as our future workforce,” Lawson reinforced. “Wemust use our subject matter expertise and resources with universities, and become the community for interns to put what they learn into practice.” Both Lawson and Barrett observed that recruiting interns is most difficult for residential programs (supportive housing and Community Support Services [CSS]), and the Education Council can foster partnerships tomeet these specific needs. “There’s amisunderstanding that residential care is just helping people find housing and get adjusted to a new community, but there’s somuchmore involved. Integrated care is needed in residential programs, and internships in these programs can be the best possible placements as they allow interns to get to know the whole person,” Barrett said. Graduate students working towardMaster’s degrees in Clinical Mental Health Counseling, Rehabilitation Counseling or Social Work can gain valuable experience in residential programs, as can Bachelor-level students in Psychiatric Rehabilitation or Social Work, according to Barrett. “Many doctoral degree candidates don’t accept internships in supportive housing or CSS because they prefer outpatient and partial care. We need to bridge this gap by discussing how to change howwemarket internship opportunities to engage students who are interested in integrated-healthcare careers, so they can realize these are excellent internship opportunities,” Lawson added. The Education Council also offers opportunities for service providers to learn about academic programs. In fact, CCT gained four interns fromFairleighDickinson University soon after representatives from this school presented on their newMSW and internship/field education programs to the council. More recently, Barrett and her colleagues presented on Rutgers SHP’s academic programs and career paths for graduates, and the providers who gained this knowledge will likely secure high- quality interns and future employees as a result. Internships are not solely for clinical positions. In fact, CCT has more policy, business and finance interns than ever before, according to Lawson. “We need to train today the professionals of tomorrow in health care, education and policy, especially as wemove toward integrated care andMedicaidmanaged care,” she stated. Other non-clinical areas include research, nonprofit management and other areas of business. “Partnerships go far beyond internships. They are also valuable for students’ residencies and practicums,” Lawson added. Lawson shared her vision of the council becoming “an ever- growing community for all to be successful as individual providers, as educators and as NJAMHAA collectively.”