Leading the Way in Workforce Development for Infant & Early Childhood Mental Health Services in Alaska

Over the past decade, Alaskan leaders have identified a significant barrier to delivering trauma-informed Infant and Early Childhood Mental Health (IECMH) services: a scarcity of qualified practitioners within Alaska's health, education, social service, and justice sectors. Insufficient access to comprehensive professional development contributes to this scarcity.

While multiple workforce development initiatives have occurred over the past ten years, the effort has been fragmented and has not reached enough IECMH practitioners across our state. All too often, the training required travel to urban hubs used trainers unfamiliar with Alaska-unique practice contexts and cultures and failed to align with the core competencies or KSAs (knowledge, skills, and abilities) that have been defined by IECMH experts. Additionally, training attendees rarely represent Alaska's diverse cultures, rural communities, or the systems that work with significantly underserved families, such as child protection, tribal behavioral health, or primary care. Furthermore, many attendees lacked foundational IECMH knowledge tailored to their fields and did not derive benefit or see value in the training thus far offered.

To deliver evidence-based IECMH services to all of Alaska's families, a collaboration between field experts, policy and program leaders, and funders is needed to resolve this fragmented approach to workforce development. Project Compass is the result of efforts between AK-AIMH and these entities. It has been developed to provide statewide access to trauma-informed, competency-based training specific to Alaska’s needs.