CAC Staffing
Task Sharing
Task sharing is the delegation of select tasks, that are often delivered by a licensed mental health provider, to a non-licensed colleague with relevant training, to expand the reach and depth of the services delivered by the licensed clinician. At present, many therapists who serve CAC clients in rural areas, especially those providing TMH services under a linkage agreement, work alone and not as part of a collaborative mental health team with the victim advocate.
The victim advocate position in a CAC is ready-made for a mental health task sharing role. In fact, many tasks victim advocates typically perform, such as providing psychoeducation about the effects of trauma on children, and addressing myths, cultural stigma, and other barriers to engaging in therapy, could easily be considered task sharing. Too often, however, victim advocacy in a CAC is not delivered in close collaboration with the mental health therapist. When considering supporting remote therapists providing TMH service, it is important to have a plan for how advocates and remote therapists can communicate and work together to support the clients they both serve. It is critical that advocates and other staff understand the benefits of TMH so they can explain them to clients. If the center staff are not on board in selling TMH, clients will not be referred.
WRCAC Telemental Health Issue Brief on Task Sharing
Training to Integrate a Victim Advocate into the CAC Mental Health Team
NCA partnered with the University of Oklahoma to develop “Enhance Early Engagement (E3): Engaging Families in Mental Health Treatment to Support Healing and Thriving”, a training program designed to teach victim advocates the key roles of task sharing as part of a CAC mental health team. According to the National Children’s Alliance, the E3 training was developed because “not all families served by CACs receive these critical [mental health] services. Through feedback from caregivers collected under NCA’s national Outcome Measurement System (OMS), we know some families report never receiving information about mental health services for themselves or their children. Thankfully, that number is falling, but even more concerning is that many of the families who do report receiving information about treatment options for children and caregivers still fail to follow up on referrals to these essential services after visiting a CAC.” The E3 training guides victim advocates through the following:
- What family engagement is and why it is important
- The expanded role of the victim advocate to include family engagement in mental health treatment;
- The importance of building collaborative relationships with mental health providers; and
- How to collaborate with a mental health provider to monitor and track services and gather metrics to inform treatment progress.
Page Last Updated: June 2024
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