Thursday, January 27, 2011

'Mini-grant' funds COMMHAT training program

COMMHAT has received a "mini-grant" from the Maryland Consortium for Children with Special Health Care Needs to develop training for primary care providers and others who provide front-line child mental health services in western Maryland. Led by the Maryland AAP's Committee on Emotional Health, the training will take place in two weekend sessions in the spring 2011. The training also provides an opportunity to test potential "common elements" modules. These modules may be combined with other interventions in training programs to support primary care providers' efforts to identify and treat child mental health problems.

COMMHAT gets funding to set up support system for primary care providers

With funding from a small grant from American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, COMMHAT has been working with Tri-State Community Health Center in Hancock, Maryland, to support pediatric mental health care through better links to community agencies and via teleconferencing. Community links were built by establishing a referral mechanism from Tri-State to the western Maryland office of The Parents' Place of Maryland, a peer support, education and advocacy organization for parents of children with disabilities. Psychologists at the University of Maryland, College Park and child psychiatrists at the University of Maryland, Baltimore provide the teleconferencing for child mental health consultation to Tri-State pediatricians.