There is a current crisis in the number of mental health professionals trained and able to provide appropriate services to the most severely disabled public mental health clients, with projections for significant increased needs as we move into the 21st century. These acute shortages include staff serving clients who are bilingual/bicultural and those who live in both inner cities and in rural areas. There are also critical shortages of child psychiatrists as well as professionals trained to serve the elderly and other special populations. In California’s state hospitals, there are already acute shortages of psychiatric technicians, nurses, and other clinical staff. Beginning in 2005, the DMH will bring an additional 1,500 beds into the system, which equates to 2,500 total staff needed. Of those, 67 percent, or 1,675 staff, would be nursing and clinical personnel.

The DMH, in collaboration with the Administration, CMHDA, CMHPC, and other concerned stakeholders, will be addressing the current and future staffing needs in the coming fiscal year. The CMHPC has identified the shortage of human resources at all levels as one of the most urgent issues facing the mental health system. In an effort to address the crisis facing the mental health system, the Planning Council convened the Human Resources Summit 2000. Through a collaborative process, key decision-makers determined nine major aspects of the staffing shortage including: expanding the capacity of postsecondary education; work readiness in the classroom; multi-lingual and multicultural pipeline strategies; school-to-career strategies; job retraining for mental health occupations in the public sector; direct consumer and family member employment; licensing boards and professional recruitment; rural strategies ; and community redefinition, corporate partnerships, and collaboration.

The Human Resource Project was developed to implement the action plan resulting from the March 2000 summit. The overall mission of the Human Resource Project is to increase the mental health workforce and to increase its cultural competence and diversity. Diversity is defined very broadly to include ethnicity, language, gender, age, and clients and family members. As of June 30, 2005, the Human Resource Project has accomplished the following:

• Developed an Integrated Dual Diagnosis Developing a Curriculum (IDD-DACUM). A DACUM is a nationally recognized, standardized approach to job analysis that produces a complete job profile including prioritized tasks. A significant proportion of clients in the public mental health system have co-occurring, mental health and substance abuse issues. However, there is a dramatic shortage of mental health workers qualified to provide integrated mental health services. The developed DACUM will produce the information necessary to develop a curriculum for training staff to address this shortage.
  
• Developed Psychiatric/Mental Health Nurse Practitioner fact sheets targeted to various levels of the career ladder. The fact sheet will assist in an effort to recruit individuals into the profession and promote the increased utilization of psychiatric mental health nurses in California’s public mental health system.
  
• Published a guide entitled, “A Guide for Developing Mental Health Components in High School Academies.” This guide encourages the development of local partnerships among local mental health employers and education programs that will result in the establishment of mental health components in high school health academies and other education programs. This partnership should stimulate a workforce pipeline that attracts youth, especially from ethnically diverse backgrounds, into pursuing mental health careers.
  
• Produced a report entitled, “Consumer and Family Member Employment in the Public Mental Health System.” The Human Resources Project Consumer and Family Member Task Force developed the report to promote the employment of consumers and family members in the mental health system. The study determined that approximately 1,600 consumers and family members were employed in 36 counties in both full- and part-time positions. It identified both successful model programs for replication and barriers that need to be overcome to increase employment opportunities.
  
• Collaborated with Assembly Member Leland Yee’s Office to develop Assembly Concurrent Resolution 54, a measure that proclaims the 3rd week of May of every year as Mental Health Occupations Week. The resolution encourages mental health professionals, persons with mental illness, family members, schools, academic institutions, and policymakers to work together to promote mental health occupations.
  
• Completed the initial phase of a retired persons project that placed retirees in job/career roles in the California public mental health system.
  
• Collaborated with Assembly Member Leland Yee’s Office to develop AB 938, a bill that extends a loan repayment program administered by the Office of Statewide Health Planning and Development to mental health professionals. This bill will assist students in managing the expenses of going to school in exchange for the commitment that, upon graduation, individuals will serve in eligible county facilities or health manpower shortage areas that are culturally and linguistically diverse.
  
• Lobbied federal legislative staff to support current federal funding efforts to assist individuals who choose mental health occupational and educational pathways.
  
• Collected data on vacancy ratesamong 22 occupations working within the public mental health system.
  
• Researched the capacity of the educational system to train professionals and paraprofessionals for work within the public mental health system.
  
• On behalf of the DMH, staffed the SB 1748 Task Force and prepared a report to the State Legislature.
  
• Convened a workgroup to address the shortage of nursing professionals and expand the utilization of psychiatric nurse practitioners in California. As an outcome of this workgroup, the CMHPC published a manual entitled “Expanding the Use of Psychiatric Nurse Practitioners in Behavioral Health Settings: Resource Materials.”
  
• Convened a series of focus groups with multicultural social workers from various agencies, including mental health, social services, and alcohol and drug, to determine how to make mental health occupations and academic programs more attractive to bilingual and bicultural students, and produced a summary report of recommendations for schools of social work and the mental health system.

The Human Resource Project intends to produce at least the following products and advance the following activities in the coming fiscal year:

• Develop a DACUM for marriage and family therapists working with California’s public mental health system. The resulting DACUM will establish a foundation for developing or enhancing current curricula offered in marriage and family therapy education programs that is relevant to practice with California public mental health system.
  
• Develop a DACUM for psychiatric technicians working with community-based agencies. The project will compare the results of the community-based agency DACUM with those from a DACUM conducted with psychiatric technicians from state hospitals. The goal is to determine if current certificated programs in the State are providing the depth and breadth necessary for the current level of practice required in California’ public mental health system.
  
• Conduct three pilot projects to convene local mental health departments, secondary education partners, and other stakeholders to develop strategies to increase mental health career opportunities in secondary educational programs.
  
• Convene a series of roundtable discussions with consumer and family member employment training programs to develop strategies to engage and include consumers and family members from diverse ethnic communities in training programs.
  
• Continue to promote the recruitment of retirees in California’s public mental health system. Developing strategies to recruit retirees will assist county mental health departments and community-based agencies in being able to have an adequate workforce to provide services.
  
• Expand post-secondary educational opportunities for mental health occupations through encouraging distance education career ladder programs and promoting secondary and post-secondary educational programmatic coordination.
  
• Provide technical assistance to regional and statewide organizations that are currently developing workforce and educational recruitment and retention plans.