Prioritizing Peers with Lived Experience to Address the Behavioral Health Workforce Crisis
As the demand for behavioral health treatment skyrockets alongside rising staff vacancy rates, behavioral health agencies are facing a true crisis in building enough capacity to meet the need. After an extensive literature review and working with more than a dozen behavioral health agencies, Third Sector believes one of the most strategic shifts agencies can make to confront this crisis is to invest heavily in roles for individuals with lived experience, known as peers.
Increasing peer positions and expanding peer responsibilities not only provides necessary staffing capacity, but is also an
APPLY NOW: Join the National Cohort to Design and Launch a Lifelong Learning Account (LiLA) Pilot
Applications are now closed.
Overview
Third Sector, a technical assistance nonprofit that advises government agencies on outcomes-based systems change, in partnership with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, is offering six months (February – August 2024) of pro bono technical assistance and training to local and state government agencies and their cross-sector partners – including employers and industry associations – interested in leveraging Lifelong Learning Accounts (LiLAs) to upskill or reskill their workforce. Participating teams in Third Sector’s national cohort will co-design a LiLA pilot and develop an implementation plan for that
Rethinking Step Down: The Next Step in Transforming Mental Health Services
At Third Sector, our mission is to transform our government agencies’ ability to serve everyone in our communities, no matter their race, background, or circumstance. And one of the most exciting and challenging things about this work is how trying to solve one set of problems reveals some other challenges we might not have understood in the same way. This is particularly true in the work we’ve been doing over the last five years in California to transform how nine counties in the state are serving and supporting tens of