Taking the time to set up clear and comprehensive administrative procedures, policies, and tools related to hiring, supervising, and working with your program’s mental health consultant(s) provides the backbone for effective services.
To be useful, administrative structures need to reflect a carefully thought through vision of mental health consultation, based on your program’s goals and current knowledge about best practices in mental health consultation.
A Mental Health Workgroup provides a forum for developing and sustaining this vision, and for ensuring appropriate administrative structures for effective mental health consultation. Effective Mental Health Workgroups involve a diverse group of parents, staff, and persons with mental health training and knowledge.
Investing time and effort into ensuring that mental health consultation services are monitored for accountability and effectiveness is key to ensuring that the dollars invested in consultation are well-spent. Think about accountability and monitoring as part of your overall efforts to integrate continuous quality improvement into your program’s service approach.
This product was developed [in part] under grant number 1H79SM082070-01 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). The views, policies and opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of SAMHSA or HHS.
