AN EVALUATION OF A NEW HIRE TRAINING PROGRAM FOR MENTAL HEALTH STAFF IN A NONPROFIT ORGANIZATION

Abstract

In nonprofit organizations, direct support staff members offering direct services to clients are essential to the day-to-day operations and continuity of client services and care. Despite this critical role, there has been limited research conducted to determine today’s direct support staff's essential training needs. Hence, the primary purpose of this evaluative case study was to assess the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the new hire on-the-job training offered to a group of direct support staff, residential and group home teacher counselors, across two southern states in a U.S. nonprofit organization serving children with mental, behavioral, and emotional disorders. This study’s secondary purpose was to provide recommended areas for improvement of the training. This evaluative case study used the Questionnaire for Professional Training Evaluation (Q4TE), semi-structured interviews, and a document review to answer two research questions. The study findings indicate that direct support staff members have an affinity for workshop-style training and de-escalation approaches such as Collaborative Problem Solving, which enable them to better manage challenging client behaviors in the field of mental health care. The study findings also indicate that direct support staff in nonprofits can be inundated with text-based content in online training modules due to federal and state laws requiring that specific topics be covered. In addition, direct support staff can experience a significant level of discomfort with physical restraints, and thus, special attention should be given to restraints training and development. This study identified opportunities via web-conferencing and videos as having benefits for enhancing the on–the-job training experience of teacher counselors.