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To our esteemed and cherished
Pacific Southwest MHTTC Network,
SAMHSA is sunsetting the Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC) Network on September 29, 2024, after six momentous and enriching years.
With this letter, we extend our appreciation to you, our mental health and school mental health workforce. We offer reflections from our team and Advisory Board and next steps for the future - including how we can stay in touch and continue to make our wealth of content available to all.
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Thank You, from the Pacific Southwest MHTTC Team!
Our Region 9’s TTA providers, project co-directors, management, and coordination staff have learned and grown with you over these past years.
You’ve made every event a fulfilling experience, with the ideas, resources, networking support, and more that you shared in the Zoom chats, the feedback given in the surveys - every form of participation helped to shape our work over these years and inspired us to create the learning summaries and the programming that grew year after year.
We have so enjoyed supporting you and your teams.
To our funder, the Substance Abuse & Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), thank you for the opportunity to democratize access to high-quality training, content, coaching, consulting, and learning experiences that support the behavioral health and school mental health workforces of Region 9 and beyond.
A Last Ask for Your Feedback
As we look back on our time serving the Pacific Southwest MHTTC Region 9 and full MHTTC Network, we’d love to hear from you - your reflections and thoughts on what was useful, and how our programming and support benefited your work.
We have a final survey and invitation to share your input - this helps us look at needs in the mental health workforce we could address in future initiatives.
Please take a few minutes to share your thoughts.
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Pacific Southwest MHTTC Project Staff and Advisory Board Reflections
Since the beginning of the project six years ago, our Region 9 has been guided by members of the PS MHTTC Advisory Board: a group of mental health professionals in the private, public, and school sectors representing the states and territories of Arizona, California, Hawaii, Nevada, and the U.S. Pacific Islands. In our last quarterly meeting this August, each member reflected on their experiences serving on the board.
One of our board members, Stephanie Zapata, shares her PS MHTTC learning reflections:
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Reflecting on all the years I've benefited personally and professionally through MHTTC’s content and online resources, and one of the things I look back to most is the leadership development and the strengths-based approaches.
I've really appreciated this space of being nonjudgmental, and also just listening and growing with each other. Seeing how many different communities are impacted by different things, and that we can find common ground. It brings up the communities of practice, too, that have come out of MHTTC.
I feel that [the Pacific Southwest] MHTTC has transformed and made accessible how we advance mental health care, how we really take care of each other, including ourselves. The biggest thing is the investment in the actual practitioners. Because we're the ones doing this work. Instead of pouring from an empty cup, it was really this investment in this sort of evergreen filled container that we could be poured into, whether that's on the leadership side or on the direct line staff.
That part is really important.
We had to move in that direction of really valuing our behavioral health workforce instead of drowning and suffering. Dealing with compassion fatigue, and caregiver burnout - those things are real. Seeing the value in the behavioral health workforce is the biggest thing that I've taken from this.
Thank you all for cultivating this safe space to do this work.”
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Our School Mental Health Field Director & Training Specialist, Leora Wolf-Prusan, shares her PS MHTTC learning reflections: | | |
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Over the years, we’ve traveled to you, and created onsite in-person institutes. We’ve pivoted our programming (now including support for Project AWARE!) and passionately centered leadership development and support in our work. We collaborated with the other incredible MHTTCs, creating nationwide programming such as the Grief Sensitivity Virtual Learning Institutes (3 years strong!), Healing School Communities, Classroom WISE, First Episode Psychosis content, and more.
Of course, I would be remiss to not acknowledge the experience of the pandemic and shifting our technical assistance approaches immediately and drastically to meet your rapidly changing needs.
Speaking for myself, I have reveled in the opportunity to be a learner-leader, to create responsive and proactive spaces for us to contend with challenges and seek solutions. Some of my favorite moments have been witnessing you realize you already knew what to do and the work was tapping into your inherent wisdom. Or the moments watching a leader in Nevada cross-resource a leader in the Northern Mariana Islands. Or the sessions where we raised more questions than answers.
Thank you - all of you- for trusting us, for joining us, for engaging with us, for advocating for us, for inviting us, for building with us. Together we created a transformational community."
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Recent & New Products from the Pacific Southwest MHTTC and Network
The Pacific Southwest team has been busy this summer, churning out a variety of products and resources before the closing. While the MHTTC network-wide website is closing, we’ve created links to ensure continued access to these resources.
» Culturally Sustaining Practices in Substance Use Prevention for Youth & Young Adults: An Interview with Tonia Herrero
This living room conversation uplifts healing-centered engagement and non-western approaches to substance use recovery and prevention for youth and young adult populations. Our MHTTC Region 9 Training and Technical Assistance Specialist, Oriana Ides, moderated this interview with Tonia Herrero, a Licensed & Board-Certified Art Therapist and Art Therapy Certified Supervisor at East Bay Art Therapy, in California.
This video explores ways to challenge prominent deficit-model approaches which permeate prevention and recovery to make space for strength-based and culturally sustaining perspectives and practices in the field. Tune in for insights into art therapy as a trauma-informed practice and discover how ancestral wisdom and culturally healing methods can aid substance use prevention and support young people in their recovery journey.
Click here to directly access the YouTube video >
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» Prioritizing Racial Equity and Advancing Cultural Humility in the Workplace: Real Change for Real Lives
The goal of this seven-hour course is to increase awareness of the importance of culturally responsive practices in behavioral health and recovery-oriented care. This course is accessible via the HealtheKnowledge platform, a cost-free package of asynchronous learning courses. It offers practical guidance and evidence-based resources to support agencies and organizations on their journey toward enhancing equitable practices in behavioral health access, treatment, recovery, and care.
This course was developed by regional centers of the Mental Health Technology Transfer Center (MHTTC) Network—New England MHTTC, Northwest MHTTC, Pacific Southwest MHTTC—and the National Coordinating Office of the Technology Transfer Center Network, and will be available for a limited time, past the close of the MHTTC network.
Access the course by visiting the HealtheKnowledge site, and signing up for an account (free of cost) here >
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» Trauma Informed Youth Peer Support: An Essential Tool for Supporting Youth
The Trauma-Informed Youth Peer Support Training Module is a five-part course that delves into the fundamentals of trauma-informed care. The course defines trauma, explores its impact, and demonstrates how to build resiliency.
Collaboratively developed and produced by the Pacific Southwest MHTTC and Youth MOVE National, this training module will guide participants through the fundamentals of trauma-informed care, covering both its core principles and philosophies. Blending brain science, evidence-based practices, and sample case studies, the course explores the importance of trauma-informed care and offers reflective practices and tools that young adult peer support specialists can start utilizing immediately.
Click here to view on our partner Youth MOVE National's website >
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» Championing Students Through Change: Welcoming Youth Transitioning To and From School
Navigating life's transitions can be challenging, especially for students moving between different educational and institutional settings. Last month, on August 20, 21, and 22, our Training and Technical Assistance team, Amanda Lipp, Melissa Smith, and Oriana Ides and a group of school mental health specialists led a series that was dedicated to supporting students through these critical periods of transition. The edited recordings of each session are now available to view. Visit each in the links below:
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Looking Ahead - What Now?
The Center for Applied Research Solutions (CARS), the lead agency on PS MHTTC, is launching a platform where all project content will be archived and available for download. This site will be announced here on our CARS website - please check here in mid-October for further information.
We encourage you to sign up here to be notified of the launch.
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Additionally, SAMHSA will be archiving a small selection of our recorded events via their YouTube channel and of our written resources via the SAMHSA Store.
See here for details on how each MHTTC Center will make some of their resources available. → Check back regularly for updates and bookmark links to access information after September 29.
Other TA Centers you can access post-MHTTC sunset (9/29/24):
Access to Resources via SAMHSA
Existing TA Centers for Referral
And coming soon…
National Center for Mental Health: Dissemination, Implementation, Sustainment
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Though the MHTTC Network is sunsetting, our teams aren’t going anywhere! Our resources and services that provide mental health capacity building, systems change, DEI leadership, school climate and healing, and trauma-informed and healing-centered approaches to care, are available through each of our organizations: Center for Applied Research Solutions, and Change Matrix.
If you would like to continue to work with us, we can be reached at carsinfo@cars-rp.org and Change Matrix’s contact form. We look forward to staying connected.
Warmly,
The Center for Applied Research Solutions team (Miranda March, Kristi Silva, Leora Wolf-Prusan, Oriana Ides, Amanda Lipp, Ingrid Severson, Ida Kostianis, Dennis Robinson, Matt Eich, Sarah Peterson, Heather Torres, Joanne Bloom, Steven Jimenez, and Kerrilyn Scott Nakai)
The Change Matrix team (Rachele Espiritu & Melissa Smith)
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Contact the Pacific Southwest MHTTC
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This announcement is supported by SAMHSA of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award over four years (2019-2023) with 100 percent funded by SAMHSA/HHS. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by SAMHSA/HHS, or the U.S. Government. | | | | |
