EVALUATION OF THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE MENTORING PROGRAM FOR BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SERVICE COORDINATORS IN ALLEGHENY COUNTY

Serious and persistent mental illnesses (SPMI) are the most costly diagnoses in the United States (Insel, 2003). There are significant financial costs associated with these psychiatric disabilities, including the costs associated with treatment and loss of wages, as well as significant social costs, including lack of social support, poverty, and inadequate available treatment services.Case managers are the mental health staff members who spend the greatest amount of time in direct contact with people with SPMI in the community. There are widespread problems in the case management workforce. Case managers have inadequate education, work experience, and on-the-job training for the amount of responsibilities that are required in their jobs. It is a career that offers limited opportunities for advancement, low salaries, and low retention.In Allegheny county, a major mental health system reform was implemented called SPA (Single Point of Accountability). One of its goals was the implementation of a Case Management Mentor Program, which was designed to provide consistent training for behavioral health case managers, develop a career ladder in case management, and help new case managers learn their jobs.This dissertation was a mixed methods study using semi-structured interviews, focus groups, and survey data to understand the barriers and facilitators to implementation of the program from the perspectives of the case managers and how the type of mentoring they received contributed to the mentee job satisfaction. The study sample consisted of 18 mentors who participated in the Service Coordination Mentor Certificate Course and 30 mentees that were trained in their new jobs at their respective agencies.Overall, mentoring was associated with higher job satisfaction. Support from a mentor during crisis situations was most significantly associated with job satisfaction. All of the participants reported that mentoring is needed and beneficial in case management. Over the course of implementation, most mentees consistently participated in a variety of mentoring activities with their mentors and overall, reported that these were very helpful. The activity that that participants reported to be most helpful, but occurred the least frequently, was the mentor having the opportunity to observe the mentee in the field