"We envision a public mental health workforce, which includes clients and family members, sufficient in size, diversity, skills and resources to deliver compassionate, safe, timely and effective mental health services to all individuals who are in need and their families and caregivers, and contributes to increased prevention, wellness, recovery and resilience for the people of California.”

INTRODUCTION

The purpose of this toolkit is to provide access to tools, strategies, sample documents, and other useful resources for developing Regional Partnerships to support workforce development in the California public mental health system.  In creating this resource, the goal is to help County mental health systems and educational partners (high school academies, community colleges, adult education, four year colleges and universities and graduate/professional programs)—along with contracted provider organizations, consumers, family members and others—a reference to assist in the planning, development and ongoing work of Regional Partnerships. While this toolkit was developed for California, it is also a resource for workforce development in public mental health systems across the United States.

The toolkit is organized by section beginning with the history and policy development around Regional Partnerships and then moves into resources for planning and implementation. It includes sample documents, links to websites and other resources throughout. Finally, it includes a section on lessons learned from the experiences of the Greater Bay Area Mental Health and Education Workforce Collaborative.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The information in this Toolkit is pulled from a variety of sources.  It is based on the experiences of the Greater Bay Area Mental Health Workforce & Education Collaborative which began as an informal collaboration of county mental health staff, educational partners, contracted providers, consumers and family members in the San Francisco Bay Area. Toni Tullys, former project director for the Collaborative, created several of the resources included in the toolkit. Christa Thompson from Calaveras County Behavioral Health Services assisted in reviewing the document, as did Wendy Desormeaux from the State Department of Mental Health.  Kimberly Mayer and Sabine Whipple of the California Institute for Mental Health are the authors.

Contact information:
Kimberly Mayer, MSSW
California Institute for Mental Health
2125 19^th Street, 2^nd Floor
Sacramento, CA 95818
kmayer@cimh.org