NH Children's Behavioral Health Workforce Development Network

A skilled and supported workforce is critical to the delivery of high-quality services to our children, youth, and families. Intentional and targeted workforce development activities ensure that we prepare providers across all levels of the workforce, including peer supporters, paraprofessionals, credentialed staff, bachelors-level, masters-level, doctoral-level, licensed professionals, and more. The NH Children’s Behavioral Health Workforce Development Network (the Network) was formed in 2009 with the specific task to develop Core Competencies. This collaborative was expanded in 2013 to include over 40 partners across child-serving sectors, disciplines, and contexts. The Network brings together providers, training institutions, policy makers, and other stakeholders to create cross-sector, interdisciplinary training within the System of Care for children and youth with behavioral health concerns and their families. The Network is an open learning community that meets five to six times per year. 

Our Vision:  New Hampshire’s children, youth, and families will receive the highest-quality services from entities and individuals who are concerned about children’s behavioral health. To that end, New Hampshire will have a highly-skilled and sustainable children’s behavioral health workforce with the capacity to support the healthy social and emotional development of every child, youth, and family. Individuals in the workforce are supported to pursue sustainable career pathways with lifelong learning opportunities and appropriate compensation for long-term careers. This workforce cuts across multiple sectors and disciplines, including peer supporters with lived experience, technicians, paraprofessionals, community-support workers, and individuals with advanced degrees and licenses in primary care, specialty care, education, and community-based sectors.  

Our Mission: The mission of the NHCBH EBP Workforce Development Network is to create hope and improve outcomes for children, youth, young adults, and their families by convening, promoting, developing, implementing, and disseminating interdisciplinary workforce development activities.

We will accomplish our mission by supporting a sustainable, responsive, and effective cross-sector system for workforce development that uses research-based implementation strategies infused with the NH Children's Behavioral Health Core Competencies and System of Care values and guiding principles.

The Network:

• Supports existing CBH workforce infrastructures, projects, and resources that build workforce competencies and skills within the System of Care;
• Convenes stakeholders to identify gaps and critical needs; explore and identify evidence-based and research-supported practices; disseminate best- and evidence-based practices; and choose, design, and implement a high-quality implementation structure, including securing resources and expert consultation to address the gaps; and
• Identifies and develops new opportunities and collaborative structures for workforce development, aligned with the NH System of Care Law (2019), New Hampshire Children’s Behavioral Health Collaborative Plan, NH’s 10-year Mental Health Plan, Senate Bill 14 (2019), and additional state and local projects and plans that impact children and youth with behavioral health concerns and their families.

Our Goals:

• Incubate interdisciplinary workforce development and research projects.
• Provide high-quality training and coaching in evidence-based practices to providers of services and supports within the NH Children's System of Care.
• Expand and refine the implementation of services and supports for transition-age youth with emotional and behavioral challenges. 

Examples of Accomplishments:

• Developed and disseminated the NH Children's Behavioral Health Core Competencies that have been nationally recognized as gold standard competencies for mental health practitioners.
• Provided a series of trainings and discussions on Mindful Leadership.
• Linked partners to resources for supporting students in associate, bachelor's, and master's degree programs.
• Developed a set of short training videos for the Children's System of Care community.