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This Web site is a component of the SAMHSA Health Information Network.

National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health

(Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development)

Dedicated to helping states, tribes, territories, and communities discover, apply, and sustain innovative and collaborative solutions that improve the social, emotional, and behavioral well-being of children and families.

We enhance and strengthen the work of states, tribes, territories, and communities as they strive to achieve comprehensive mental health delivery systems for children and families.  System of care values and principles guide our work with states and communities and result in approaches that are:

• Community-based

• Comprehensive, coordinated, and collaborative across agencies and systems

• Involve families and youth as full partners

• Culturally competent with respect to racial, ethnic and linguistic differences

• Individualized, flexible, coordinated and designed to fit each child and family and

• Strength-based

Areas of Focus

The National TA Center focuses on priority areas for developing and implementing comprehensive service delivery systems: policy development, leadership development, strategic planning, interagency collaboration, family involvement, cultural competence, early childhood mental health systems of care, evaluation, interagency management information systems, evidence-based and promising practices, financing and managed care, workforce development, and mediation and negotiation training.  The National TA Center activities reach diverse stakeholders including state and local policymakers, administrators of all child-serving systems, service providers, families, youth, advocates, researchers and evaluators, and educators.

Upcoming Training Events

The National TA Center offers regular training through National Training Institutes, The National Conference Call Series, National Policy Academies, Leadership Academies, and System of Care Training and Early Childhood Mental Health Policy Academies.

• The next National Training Institutes will be held in June 2006.  The Institutes are held every two years and bring together about 2,000 people from all across the country for intensive training in a wide range of topics related to systems of care development.  Each Institute has a special focus on an area critical to systems transformation.  The 2006 Institutes will offer four-hour in-depth training institutes and many workshops featuring innovative and best practices from across the country.

• The National Technical Assistance Topical Conference Call Series presents discussions on critical issues in systems transformation.  The monthly calls are held the third Thursday of each month from 1-2:30 pm EST.  The 2005 series will begin in January.  Details on calls and registration can be found on our website.

• The fifth National Policy Academy for States, Tribes and will be held in July 2005.  The Policy Academy brings together delegations from states, tribes and territories to do intensive work on designing new policies to improve service delivery and outcomes for children and families with mental health needs.  Extensive pre-, onsite, and follow-up work is done with the delegations to maximize successful policy development.  Applications to participate in the 2005 Policy Academy will be distributed to governors and tribal authorities in January.

• A National Leadership Academy is held each year for family and professional leaders of the federal CMHS Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program grantees, leaders of statewide family organizations, and state mental health agencies.  These academies are designed to enhance the leadership skills of participants in implementing systems of care.  The next leadership academy will be held in March 2005.

• Primer Hands On is an intensive course on building effective systems of care.  The two-day course is designed for state, community and family leaders in systems of care.  The next Primer Hands On training will be held in November 2004 in Washington, DC and again in March 2005.  Adaptations of the course have been developed for new federally funded systems of care grantees and statewide family network chapters.

Individualized Technical Assistance and Consultation

National Technical Assistance Center faculty and staff provide assistance to states, tribes and communities on a wide variety of key topics either by phone or onsite. Faculty and staff are frequently work with specific states or communities on issues related to their systems development.

• Technical assistance on cultural competence is provided by the National Center for Cultural Competence (NCCC) at The Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development. The mission of the NCCC is to increase the capacity of health care and mental health programs to design, implement, and evaluate culturally and linguistically competent service delivery systems. The NCCC conducts an array of activities to fulfill its mission, including: 1) training, technical assistance, and consultation; 2) networking, linkages, and information exchange; and 3) knowledge and product development and dissemination. Major emphasis is placed on policy development, assistance in conducting cultural competence organizational self-assessments, and strategic approaches to the systematic incorporation of culturally competent values, policy, structures, and practices within organizations.

• Technical assistance on early intervention and behavioral health services and supports for young children is provided to states, tribes, and communities that are designing and implementing policy and community service approaches. Technical assistance is also available through monographs on financing strategies and models of mental health consultation in early childhood settings.

• Faculty are available to provide technical assistance to communities around addressing and preventing youth violence and on conflict mediation and resolution across agencies and with clients.

• Faculty also provide technical assistance on collaboration between child welfare and mental health agencies, including policy development, improving program services, financing service delivery, and utilizing welfare reform Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (ANF) funds to provide mental health service to families receiving or leaving welfare.

• Technical assistance on building evaluation into systems of care and on building interagency management information systems is provided in a variety of ways, including an ongoing national scan of state and community evaluation activities posted on the National TA Center Web site, issues of Data Matters newsletter, a management information system Toolkit, the Technical Assistance on Management Information Systems (TAMIS) listserv, Interagency MIS Roundtable Meetings, and conference calls on evaluation strategies.

• The Transforming, Linking and Caring (TLC) initiative is a collaboration with SAMHSA to link together multiple federally funded grants in close geographical areas around the nation to increase their collaboration, impact, and sustainability.  The TLC project is currently working with three sites in the East, Midwest, and West.

• The State Infrastructure Grant program, recently funded by CMHS, awarded funds to six states and one Tribe to improve infrastructures to promote comprehensive service delivery in communities.  The National TA Center provides technical assistance to grantees on meeting their infrastructure development goals and objectives.   Technical assistance focuses on strategic planning processes and development of systems management structures to implement transformations.

Technical Assistance Publications

The National TA Center develops documents describing evidenced-based practices, conceptual frameworks for systems development, cross-agency service and financing approaches, findings from research and evaluations, topical fact sheets, practical toolkits that synthesize information on aspects of developing collaborative systems of care, and training curricula. Many new informative monographs and briefing papers are produced each year. A listing of publications is available on the National TA Center Web site.

• Strategies for understanding, planning for and implementing cultural and linguistic competence in systems of care are the focus of publications on the Web site of the National Center for Cultural Competence and include, A Guide to Planning and Implementing Cultural Competence: Organizational Self Assessment, Planning for Cultural and Linguistic Competence in Systems of Care, Getting Started…Moving On, and Cultural Competence Planning Guide.

• The National TA Center publishes Data Matters, a summary of current information and resources on program evaluation, interagency management systems, and evidence- based practices. Data Matters is written for a broad audience.  Data Matters #6, the most recent issue, gives an introduction to evidence-based practices and is available on our web site or it can be ordered.  Data Maters #7 will be published in 2005 and will focus on evidence-based practices and cultural competence.

• Building Systems of Care: A Primer, by Sheila Pires, is a detailed tool kit for learning the processes and structures necessary to build effective system of care.  This comprehensive publication covers all components of systems building and provides many examples of effective community practices.

• A Family’s Guide to the Child Welfare System is a hands-on resource for families who need to understand and negotiate the many programs in the child welfare system.  The guide is a great resource for direct services providers to understand the child welfare system from a family’s perspective. 

• An Issue Brief On Systems of Care, by Beth Stroul, discusses the framework of systems of care in a changing mental health environment.

• Technical assistance on networking with child welfare around meeting the mental health needs of children in foster care and child protective services is provided through a series of monographs available from the National TA Center.  Two new documents are Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Children in Foster Care System: Strategies for Implementation and Meeting the Mental Health Needs of Children in the Foster Care System: Summary of State and Community Efforts. A variety of Center activities promote collaboration between the child welfare and mental health systems, including information on the Adoption and Safe Families Act, the Family Opportunity Act, and on promising examples of collaborative initiatives.

Communities Can!

Background

Communities Can! began in 1990 when the Federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau and the American Academy of Pediatrics created it to identify, recognize, and study communities that had made substantial progress toward building coordinated, family-centered, culturally competent systems of care for children with special needs. This effort was then expanded to invite other communities to become part of a network to support community systems development, with additional support provided by the Child, Adolescent and Family Branch (CAFB) of the Federal Center for Mental Health Services in the form of both funding and active participation in the planning and implementation of this new effort. In 1997, the Federal Interagency Coordinating Council (FICC) for early intervention joined by endorsing Communities Can! The FICC serves as the mechanism for Federal agencies with common program goals to facilitate coordination of resources and to model interagency coordination at the Federal level. Communities Can! works with the FICC through its Services Integration Subcommittee, which is currently chaired by Dr. Merle McPherson of the Federal Maternal and Child Health Bureau.

Communities Can! is now a growing national coalition of communities dedicated to effectively serving and supporting all children, including those with or at risk for disabilities, and their families. Communities Can! was created as a fulfillment of a vision, providing a supportive network for communities working toward creating family-centered, community-based, culturally competent systems of care.

This network, coordinated by the Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, is designed to:

• link communities with other communities to learn from their experiences;

• connect communities with information about how to better serve and support all families;

• help communities develop community leadership and strengthen community processes;

• give communities a voice in policy decisions; and

• recognize and publicize the achievements of members by honoring five communities each year in a Congressional Recognition Program.

The major emphasis in working with communities that have grants from the Center for Mental Health Services is in leadership development. In working and listening to leaders for many years, we found the work of the leaders in the systems-of-care field is often so consumed by putting out fires, that the opportunity to reflect on one’s own role and responsibility as a leader seems impossible. Communities Can! is providing this opportunity for community leaders through the Leadership Academy. The chaotic and rapidly changing environment of communities around the country demands that we begin to do the work of leadership differently. As it has been said, “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always gotten.” Leadership is no different, and at Communities Can! we know that it’s time to provide leaders with tools that will make a profound impact on their capacity to lead by helping them discover their sources of effectiveness and new perspectives and paradigms about the very essence of leadership itself.

Areas of Activity

Leadership Academy

The Communities Can! Leadership Academy offers leaders an opportunity to take a step back from the day-to-day and to explore the nature of leadership, their role as leaders in the process of systems change, and strategies to support their continued growth and development as leaders.

The academy is designed to help community leaders:

• develop a consciousness about the nature and practice of leadership and commitment of the leadership role;

• gain a greater understanding of individual leadership strengths and opportunities for improvement which promote success;

• broaden individual skills and tools for greater effectiveness in leadership activities; and

• understand that leadership is the ability to mobilize people to change, and the capacity to make a difference.

The academy curriculum models a process of change that is anchored in self-examination and discovery. It incorporates the exploration of the dynamics of community transformation through collaboration, risk-taking, and the creative use of stress to foster change and sustain it over time. Participants focus on examining their leadership behavior and actions within chaos, conflict, and change, and strengthening their ability to mobilize community involvement and adapt to change effectively.

The Communities Can! Leadership Academy is an opportunity for leaders to: 1) reinforce their passion for systems change; 2) learn new ways to understand and define the leadership role within systems of care; and 3) create effective strategies to sustain oneself as a leader in an environment of rapid change and uncertainty.

The Communities Can! Leadership Academy has three stages of learning:

1. a 3-month preparatory period in which individuals begin understanding and identifying their leadership behaviors and challenges;

2. a 4-day intensive training and learning institute that employs a variety of learning methods to give leaders a supportive environment in which they can explore their own leadership strengths and opportunities for improvement; and

3. a continuous learning framework in which Academy participants apply and deepen the leadership concepts in their home environment through the use of a peer-driven National Learning Community of Leaders. Additional support and coaching by Academy staff and faculty is available on a fee basis.

During the training program, participants are led through a process examining personal vision and values. Through interactive dialogue, participants are then presented a variety of tools for framing the work, building a shared vision, and expanding one’s set of leadership skills. The “adaptive challenge framework” for community leadership, designing ways to lead without authority, recognizing personal mechanisms for managing conflict, and increasing capacity to evaluate and take risks, are cornerstones of the academy. Participants and faculty design various strategies for “thriving in the chaos” to help sustain their effects over time.

Leadership Academy faculty and staff work with participants to create an environment that cultivates self-discovery and peer collaboration. These tools are utilized with a higher goal in mind: to equip leaders with frameworks to think and behave differently, in order to discover new solutions and sustain change.

The Communities Can! Leadership Academy is created for families and professionals at all levels of community, local, State, and Federal government, who are committed to expanding their own leadership and implementing systems change through an expansion of their own leadership capacity.

We have offered this program to community and family leaders in the systems of care field, State mental health administrators, and employees of the Federal Government.

Negotiating Together

Working to develop and advocate for services and supports for children and families in communities often involves dealing with conflict. To successfully resolve those conflicts, it is important that families, providers, agency staff, and other community leaders have the skills to effectively negotiate their differences in ways that build mutual respect, collaboration, and positive relationships over time.

This course focuses on a process and the skills necessary to engage in a collaborative or interest-based negotiation. Participants explore the theory of conflict and negotiation styles, and learn through a variety of teaching methods the communication skills and the step-by-step process of negotiating that leads to interest-based decisions.

Facilitating Together

In this world of complex systems, ever-expanding knowledge, and intricate webs of working relationships, coming to common ground is a challenge for all of us. Communities and other groups working to build collaborative efforts for children and families often discover that the process gets stalled, despite many meetings and efforts. Facilitating the group to make decisions and act on those decisions usually falls to the leadership of the group.

This course focuses on the learning and skills necessary to be effective in that facilitative role and on special techniques for managing the process. Participants have an opportunity to explore, through the use of facilitation, ways to enhance the collaborative decision making of community groups, work-teams, and other gatherings of people who must work together to solve problems.

Communities of Excellence Awards

Each year, an awards process identifies and recognizes five communities that have found an effective way to use the resources from key Federal public programs for serving young children and their families (education, early intervention, health, mental health, childcare, Head Start, and developmental disabilities) to build an integrated set of services and supports that work for families and young children (ages 0-8). These services and supports should be family-centered, culturally competent, and coordinated and ensure the inclusion of all children and families as valued members of community life.

These five communities are invited to a special meeting for three days in Washington, DC. Each community brings a delegation of at least five key members of the community team including at least one family member. The first day of the meeting is designed to provide community representatives with an introduction to leadership concepts and skills. On the second day, community representatives meet with Federal representatives from Federal Interagency Coordinating Council (FICC) member agencies to discuss issues related to Federal policy and community systems development. The third day is a celebration of the “Communities of Excellence.” An awards ceremony is held at the U.S. Capitol. First, communities meet with their local representative or senator. Later that morning, a member of Congress representing their own community presents them with their award.

To order publications, call Mary Deacon, Publications Manager, at 202-687-8803.