Abstract
A recovery-oriented curriculum for training the Community Navigation Specialists (CNSs) of the new Opening Doors to Recovery in Southeast Georgia program was developed, implemented, and preliminarily evaluated. This new mental health program provides mobile, community-based support services to individuals with serious mental illnesses and a history of psychiatric inpatient recidivism (and commonly past incarcerations and homelessness). Teams of CNSs include a licensed social worker, a family member of an individual with a serious mental illness, and a peer specialist with lived experience. In two courses held in February and June of 2011, 14 newly hired CNSs participated in the new training. A pre-training/post-training evaluation demonstrated statistically significant improvements in pertinent knowledge and self-efficacy for working in a community navigation role. As the recovery paradigm continues to be implemented in diverse real-world mental health treatment settings, recovery-based training curricula should be carefully constructed and evaluated.
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Acknowledgments
The Opening Doors to Recovery in Southeast Georgia program and the parallel research study are funded by two grants from the Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation. Support for the Opening Doors to Recovery program was also provided by the 2012 Georgia Legislature, the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities, the Georgia Department of Labor, and CSX Corporation.
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Compton, M.T., Reed, T., Broussard, B. et al. Development, Implementation, and Preliminary Evaluation of a Recovery-Based Curriculum for Community Navigation Specialists Working with Individuals with Serious Mental Illnesses and Repeated Hospitalizations. Community Ment Health J 50, 383–387 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-013-9598-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10597-013-9598-2