Behavioral Health Workforce

The Crisis Care Centers Levy funding is building a stronger community behavioral workforce that serves communities across King County. Investments currently focus on recruitment, training, retention, and increasing the representativeness of the community behavioral health workforce.

A sample of current investments follows:

Career Pathways

Community behavioral health agencies are receiving funding in four priority areas to strengthen their workforce: clinical supervision, practicums and internships, professional development, and workforce wellbeing.

Crisis Care Training Academy

The Crisis Care Training Academy (CTA) is under development to provide a centralized crisis training resource for Crisis Care Centers, Post-Crisis Follow-Up (PCFU) teams, and other behavioral health and social service settings in King County. The training focuses on the roles, responsibilities, and coordination of services. The CTA will also provide foundational knowledge and best practices in crisis care for clinical staff in outpatient behavioral health settings who frequently encounter individuals in crisis and need to understand how to effectively coordinate with crisis services.

Registered Apprenticeships

BHRD contracts with the Healthcare Training Fund to offer behavioral health apprenticeship opportunities, including for Behavioral Health Technicians, Peer Support Specialist, and Substance Use Disorder Professional roles.

Behavioral Health Education and Advancement Model (BEAM)

Through this labor-management partnership with the Healthcare Training Fund, participating community behavioral health agencies have access to a funding for tuition assistance, professional development, license fees, and conferences.

About the Crisis Care Center Initiative

• What is a crisis care center?
• What happens after someone leaves a crisis care center?
• Who will crisis care centers serve?
• Who will work at a crisis care center?
• Meet a 988 crisis call line specialist 

State Environmental Policy Act 

DCHS is issued a Letter of Determination of Non-significance for new residential treatment facilities in compliance with the State Environmental Policy Act (SEPA; RCW 43.21C). The intent of SEPA is to ensure that state and local agencies take into consideration the potential environmental impacts of a proposal, as well as ways to mitigate those impacts, during their decision-making processes. Based on the evaluation of the proposal as documented in the SEPA Checklist, King County has determined that this proposal will not have any significant adverse impact on the environment. An environmental impact statement (EIS) is not required under RCW 43.21C.030 based on review of the SEPA Checklist.