| Advice
for New Teams or Administrators Starting a DBT Program
within a Large System |
In this section,
we outline the steps for new teams planning to start
a DBT program in a larger mental health system. Any
team implementing any type of program, DBT or non-DBT,
must have five key types of administrative support
to insure development and stability of the program. |
| 1. |
Financing, including a budget plan, for the program. |
| 2. |
Adequate staffing levels. |
| 3. |
Time to learn and implement
the treatment; once treatment is implemented, time
to keep the program running. Sometimes teams make the
mistake of starting a new program, without asking for
time within their schedules to create and run the program.
Make sure you’re not adding something to your
schedule, if your schedule is already full. |
| 4. |
Meeting space (e.g., offices and group rooms). |
| 5. |
A leader and team who are granted authority over
the plan for design and implementation of the program. |
Before
starting any program, we encourage you to identify
the administrators whose support is crucial to your
program. Speak with them informally to talk over
the possibility of a new program. Then, write both
a one page bulleted plan and a five page in-depth
plan for development of your program. Have both plans
critiqued by people within the system who are in
favor of, or neutral about, your plans. Use their
feedback to improve your plan, then submit them to
your administrator(s) and ask for a formal meeting
to present the plan. After you and your administrator(s)
have outlined a detailed design that meets the five
conditions above, use the following guidelines to
get your team trained: |
How
to Get DBT into an Entire System |
| Achieving
true implementation of any evidence based practice
requires a significant commitment of time and resources
from dedicated staff. Whether your goal is raising
the level of staff clinical skills, building a continuum
of care for a specific client population, or responding
to the demands of a licensing or legal entity, we will
work with you to design an effective training and implementation
model. |
| There
are many ways to proceed and many factors to consider
as you determine what you wish to accomplish. The following
questions will guide your thinking and provide answers
to the next steps. |
| 1. |
What specific goals or problems are being addressed
with a training intervention? |
| 2. |
Is training the appropriate intervention for the
problem you need to solve? |
| 3. |
What time frame will you have from the beginning
to the end of your project? |
| 4. |
What funding is in place or will need to be in
place in order to bring training on site? |
| 5. |
Who are
the stakeholders? |
| 6. |
Do you
have buy in from all the stakeholders? |
Behavioral
Tech can work with a system of any size, of any nature,
to tailor the most effective training and/or implementation
plan. Depending on outcome goals, funding and staff
to support the initiative, full implementation of
DBT can take anywhere from 6 months to 3 years. Behavioral
Tech’s recommended model of implementation
starts with orientation training, followed by in-depth
Intensive training, followed by further two-day trainings
focused on specific topic areas determined by your
staff. Along the way we strongly recommend consultation
in order to support the teaching and to strengthen
commitment to and acquisition of the treatment protocols. |
Keeping
in mind that we can tailor the training to you, there
are two main paths for system implementation: |
| |
OPTION
ONE: Onsite introductory training combined with a select
group of teams attending offsite Intensive training.
This option takes more time, but requires less immediate
resources. |
| |
OPTION
TWO: Onsite training the whole way through. This
option has more startup costs, but moves the system
much farther, much faster. Both follow a protocol
of orientation followed by in-depth training. |
| For
more information on what we offer, please contact our Director of Training and Implementation at (206) 675-8588 or at info@behavioraltech.org. |
For
a list of all the onsite training and consultation
formats we offer to agencies, click
here. |
