CHDI to Develop Children's Behavioral Health Workforce Center for Connecticut with Support from The Tow Foundation
CHDI was recently awarded a generous grant from The Tow Foundation to support development of a Children’s Behavioral Health Workforce Center for Connecticut over the next two years.
The new Center will advance recommendations in CHDI’s Strengthening the Behavioral Health Workforce for Children, Youth, and Families: A Strategic Plan for Connecticut by expanding and diversifying the workforce pipeline, improving transparency and availability of workforce data, and strengthening workforce competencies.
Funding from The Tow Foundation will enable us to build upon CHDI’s prior and existing workforce initiatives to support the Center’s activities, including expanding access to the Kids Mental Health Training portal, which offers free, high-quality online professional development courses in a variety of children's behavioral health topics. It will also enable CHDI to develop new training opportunities; collect, analyze, and report workforce data; and build partnerships between employers and higher education.
“We are very excited to launch the Children’s Behavioral Health Workforce Center,” says Aleece Kelly, MPP, CHDI Director of System Development and Policy. “Supporting the pipeline, training, and wellbeing of the workforce is necessary to ensuring access to and quality of services for children and families in the state, especially as needs continue to rise. This work will realize one of the key recommendations from the Workforce Strategic Plan. We are grateful to The Tow Foundation for supporting this important initiative.”
Why have a center dedicated specifically to children's behavioral health?
"Services for children can be more complex and time-consuming, especially when you consider the number of other people in a child's life who need to be involved, like family members, schools, juvenile justice or child welfare services," explains Kelly. "Working effectively with children and youth also requires specialized competencies and experience."
We look forward to this continued partnership with The Tow Foundation and other key stakeholders working to strengthen the children's behavioral health workforce in Connecticut.
Read the Children's Behavioral Health Workforce Strategic Plan for Connecticut
Browse the Kids Mental Health Training Catalog
About The Tow Foundation
The Tow Foundation was established in 1988 by Leonard and Claire Tow as a way to give back to the communities that shaped them. Its five primary impact areas are equity and justice, medicine and public health, arts and culture, higher education, and civic engagement. Grounded in its decades of work in Connecticut and New York and based in New Canaan, CT, the Foundation supports visionary leaders and nonprofit organizations to find and enact innovative solutions to persistent inequality. It works to ensure people can become full participants in their communities, achieve transformative and lasting progress, and develop approaches that allow everyone to reach their full potential. Learn more at towfoundation.org.
Building better systems
CHDI brings together government, youth and family, provider, school, community, and research partners to identify system-level challenges and advance research-based solutions that strengthen infrastructure, improve care, and ensure better outcomes for all children, youth, and families.