Camden Coalition’s Complex Care Education Extends to Various Sectors

To help close the training gap for health care professionals working in complex care, the Camden Coalition has introduced a new skills lab to support community health workers, peer-support specialists, nurses, doctors, social workers, and case managers in building essential skills.

Gladys Antelo-Allen, associate director of Education and Training at Camden Coalition, highlights how the training benefits extend across various sectors like health care, social services, and the judicial system. Camden Coalition serves as a resource hub, offering a range of training opportunities such as the complex care certificate, virtual instructor-led training on engagement strategies, and a forthcoming certificate for complex care team leaders.

She also describes how the program aims to equip supervisors and managers with the necessary skills, attitudes, and knowledge to effectively lead teams supporting individuals with complex health and social needs.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

Who could benefit from the training courses in Camden Coalition's skills lab?

Some of the folks that can really benefit from something like this would oftentimes be those frontline providers, like community health workers, nurses, doctors, social workers, case managers, and peer-support specialists. But it doesn't have to just be within the health care realm, right? These could be folks that are sitting within different types of organizations. You can be someone who's sitting within a health care organization, just as a social services organization, a community-based organization, or sitting within the judicial system. I think that it is something that is broad enough, that the topics are broad enough and supportive enough for the folks that are just engaging with folks in the community or engaging with folks that maybe have experienced some complex health and social needs.

Are there any related resources that Camden Coalition provides?

The Camden Coalition is really a hub for learning and resources. Alongside this skills lab, we also offer a wide variety of tools and training opportunities. For example, our Camden Learning Center houses resources like the complex care certificate. We also have our virtual instructor-led trainings on engagement strategies like our COACH framework and the whole-person care for people who use drugs, and our supervision model called Relate. We're also excited to launch a certificate for complex care team leaders later this year. And that program is specifically designed for supervisors and managers from all disciplines and settings who oversee teams and programs supporting individuals with complex health and social needs, and it will equip them with the skills, attitudes, and knowledge that they need to lead with confidence.

Oftentimes, you know, getting a supervisor role in complex care or a managerial role, sometimes what it looks like is, you're doing a really great job in care coordination, case management, or whatever the thing is, and you should be a supervisor, right? But what are the skills that are really needed to be able to do this, to do that work really well, to sit in as a supervisor and support the frontline staff that are engaging with folks? We're really excited to launch that. We're all about really giving care teams what they need to succeed, whether that's a quick practical lesson and skills lab or a more in-depth opportunity to build expertise through some of our other training offerings, as I mentioned.