CHDI Named Top 10 "Best Places to Work" for 2nd Straight Year! |
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CHDI placed ninth in the small/medium company category and was the top non-profit to earn the award!
Thank you to our amazing CHDI team!
Our staff and board are kind, dedicated, and most importantly, they are passionate about improving the lives of children and families.
View more photos from the event on our social media accounts (@CHDICT) and stay tuned in March for the HBJ and New Haven Biz print editions profiling award winners.
If you are interested in joining our team, see our job listings at www.chdi.org/jobs.
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Recent Issue Brief Explores Early Substance Use Care for Youth |
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Child behavioral health clinics provide essential care for youth with behavioral and emotional problems, including those at risk for substance use. Unfortunately, lack of provider substance use training, limited reimbursement options, and other factors have interfered with the delivery of early substance use care in outpatient settings.
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CHDI's Issue Brief 87, "Improving Early Substance Use Care for Youth: The Essential Role of Outpatient Behavioral Health Clinics," examines opportunities to enhance early substance use screening and treatment and includes recommendations to support youth using substances within their behavioral health care treatment.
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Journal Article Explores Ways that Caregiver Needs Impact Youth Outcomes in Systems of Care |
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Youth development is inextricably tied to their family context. However, while systems of care (SOC) provide an array of effective wraparound services to youth with serious emotional and behavioral problems, little research has been dedicated to analyzing how caregiver needs influence use of these services and affect youth outcomes. CHDI Associate Vice President of School & Community Initiatives, Jeana Bracey recently co-authored a study with Alayna Schreier, Madeline Stenersen, Michael Strambler, and Joy Kaufman of Yale University and Tim Marshall of CT Department of Children & Families, published in Children and Youth Services Review, that took an important step towards developing a better understanding of caregiver needs in SOCs.
The study aimed to identify and define categories of caregiver needs that could help SOCs design supports for caregivers whose needs may impact their children’s use of and outcomes in SOC services. The authors conducted a latent class analysis, believed to be the first of its kind, of 703 youth and caregivers enrolled in wraparound care coordination within Connecticut’s statewide SOC. The analysis revealed four main classes or categories of caregiver need: physical health needs, basic needs, mental health/trauma needs, or no needs. By grouping caregivers into these four classes at entry into care, SOC providers can better predict how likely they are to engage in, benefit from, and complete the service, and further individualize service provision to improve outcomes.
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New Children's Behavioral Health Initiatives |
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Expanding Substance Use Screening, Brief Intervention, and Care Coordination Services for Youth in Outpatient Settings |
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CHDI is excited to help expand access to early substance use screening and care for youth in Connecticut through a new state contract. Over the next three years, CHDI will provide training, consultation, and data reporting to more than 100 outpatient clinicians in substance use screening, brief intervention, and care coordination services for approximately 500 youth with substance use concerns. The initiative builds upon CHDI’s ongoing children’s outpatient quality improvement activities and will increase access to substance use screening and services for Connecticut youth and families. CHDI's recent Issue Brief highlights best practices in substance use services that will be used to inform this work. For more information about this work, contact Jack Lu, Director of Implementation, at jalu@uchc.edu.
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Solutions to Strengthen CT's Behavioral Health Workforce |
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CHDI is working with the State of Connecticut, providers, youth, families, and Connecticut State Colleges and Universities to find solutions to address the children's behavioral health workforce shortage and recommend strategies to ensure a sustainable workforce for the future. We are doing this through the following three state-funded initiatives:
Workforce Development Strategic Plan
CHDI has contracted with the State of Connecticut to develop a statewide strategic plan for the children’s behavioral health workforce. The plan will include system, policy and practice, short- and long-term recommendations regarding the workforce pipeline, recruitment, retention, diversity strategies, and competency areas to strengthen. CHDI will be conducting extensive stakeholder engagement, inclusive of families and family advocates, providers, state agency leadership, researchers, and professional associations, as well as a review of best practices and innovative models in other states to identify recommendations to include in the strategic plan.
Workforce: Online Training Coordinating Center
CHDI was asked to serve as the state’s Children’s Behavioral Health Workforce Development Coordinating Center and develop an asynchronous and live training portal to increase knowledge and skills related to children’s behavioral health. CHDI has conducted a scan of currently available training to identify gaps and is developing 4-6 new training modules annually to fill those gaps. Continuing education units will be offered for the completion of each training. A survey on the learner’s experience will inform the project’s evaluation and guide quality improvement activities for the initiative.
CT Health Horizons
CHDI is providing behavioral health content expertise to the Connecticut State Colleges and Universities (CSCU) as part of the state's CT Health Horizons project. CT Health Horizons is a three-year project funded by the Governor’s office to address workforce shortages in the fields of nursing and social work. The initiative provides funding to colleges and universities to expand faculty and provide tuition support for students while creating strategic workforce partnerships.
CHDI will provide the following guidance and support to CSCU for the project:
- Support innovative projects proposed by BSW/MSW programs intended to strengthen hiring pipelines, share resources, and design flexible programs for students and faculty
- Assess statewide data on current and prospective social worker staffing needs as well as higher education needs
- Identify best practices to address workforce shortages, and develop sustainable mechanisms to track workforce supply and demand
- Produce an annual, publicly available report on the state’s social work landscape and progress in implementing best practices.
Learn more about our work to strengthen the children's behavioral health workforce.
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Seeking Feedback: CT's Behavioral Health Workforce |
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Survey for Providers, Faculty, Students, & Families in CT |
Are you a Connecticut-based children's behavioral health provider, family, family advocate, higher education faculty, or student in a behavioral health field? |
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We want to hear from you!
We are seeking input by March 17 to inform the development of a statewide strategic plan for strengthening the children's behavioral health workforce.
The survey is available in English and Spanish. (Select your preferred language in the top right corner).
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https://survey.alchemer.com/s3/7202025/Children-s-Behavioral-Health-Workforce-Survey.
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Focus Groups for Youth, Families & Behavioral Health Providers |
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CHDI is conducting focus groups with families, providers, and youth with experience in one or more of the following care settings in Connecticut:
- Intensive Outpatient
- Partial Hospitalization
- Extended Day Treatment
- Psychiatric Residential Treatment Facilities
In addition to learning more about experiences accessing, receiving, and providing intermediate and higher levels of care, we are also looking for families to talk more broadly about their experiences with any level of care, including outpatient care.
If you are interested in learning more, please contact Aleece Kelly at alkelly@uchc.edu.
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EBT Spotlight: Attachment, Regulation, and Competency (ARC) |
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Our latest in the EBT Spotlight Series takes a look at ARC: Attachment, Regulation, and Competency Framework.
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ARC is an evidence-based behavioral health treatment for children who have experienced complex trauma - and their caregivers. Watch to learn how ARC is helping children recover.
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To learn about ARC training for mental health providers, find an ARC provider for your child in Connecticut, or learn about other evidence-based treatments for kids, visit https://www.chdi.org/ebt/
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CHDI Bids Farewell to Leah Lord |
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CHDI wished Leah Lord well as she relocates to Maryland. Since July 2021, Leah has administratively supported and enhanced over a dozen CHDI projects. She successfully maintained a high capacity to manage her administrative roles, support Connecticut system-changing efforts through the Behavioral Health Plan workgroups, and create a brighter place to work through CHDI's Sunshine Committee. We are fortunate to work with Leah as a contractor over the next several months during this transition. |
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CHDI is Growing - Join Our Team! |
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CHDI is seeking candidates for the following positions.
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Administrative Assistant - CHDI is seeking a full-time Administrative Assistant to support staff working on a range of children's behavioral health initiatives.
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2023-2024 Postdoctoral Fellowship to work on one or more initiatives focused on improving children’s behavioral health in Connecticut.
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Child Health and Development Institute
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