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About Connections

Philadelphia Connections is an organization funded by
the city of Philadelphia that works to increase the quality of
behavioral health care for consumers and their families in
the Philadelphia Behavioral Health System (BHS).

Connections does this through promoting collaborative projects
among Pennsylvania colleges and universities, Philadelphia area
BHS care providers, and BHS governmental agencies.

Connections includes representatives of family advocacy groups,
BHS administrators, BHS providers, and schools and universities

Click here for a one-page hand-out description of Connections.

l History

l Collaborative Partnerships in Social Work and Psychiatry

History

Philadelphia Connections developed over a series of meetings in 1999.
Representatives of schools, providers, BHS governmental agencies, family
and consumer advocacy groups, and others discussed concerns that students
in BHS internships or field placements were not receiving enough orientation
to the populations and issues of the BHS. Other concerns included the amount
of supervision students were getting in their internships, how agencies were
reimbursed for clinical services provided by graduate students, and how
graduate school programs might participate in preparing students for BHS
placements and subsequent jobs in the system.

The key concept that developed was the importance of collaborative efforts
between providers, schools, and BHS governmental agencies. Mutual
interests were seen between the provider agencies who had the jobs,
schools who were preparing students for the jobs, and BHS governmental
agencies that wanted to insure that the highest quality services were provided
by both current students and students who went on to become BHS staff.
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Looking to start with manageable pilot programs, Connections members
chose to focus on masters level social work students since social work
typically provides the largest number of professional staff in behavioral
health agencies. After eliciting extended feedback from schools and providers,
Connections concentrated on promoting cooperative ventures with graduate
social work programs from three schools of social work, and four provider
agencies that served as placement sites for the students.

Also from the beginning, Connections worked with BHS organizations
such as Community Behavioral Health (CBH). In conjunction with CBH,
Connections members developed standards to assure good placements for
students in the BHS and fair reimbursement for their services to the
provider agencies that hosted their placements.

In 2001, Connections added the profession of psychiatry to its areas of
concentration, again soliciting extended feedback from psychiatry
residency programs, provider agencies, and BHS governmental agencies
before embarking on psychiatry pilot programs that had wide-spread support.

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Collaborative Partnerships in Social Work and Psychiatry

In all, Connections is currently funding 23 collaborative efforts among schools
of social work, psychiatry residency programs, provider agencies, and BHS
organizations such as CBH. These collaborations include:

A pilot community psychiatry seminar series at three Universities
A system-wide effort to enhance social work student placements
and improve students’ competencies and awareness concerning
BHS consumers and their families
An initiative to increase recruitment and retention of psychiatrists
at BHS agencies

Connections has also worked with CBH on four projects, including the
codification of graduate student reimbursement and supervision standards.

For more information on current collaborative efforts
and how to obtain funding,
please visit the Social Work page and the Psychiatry page.

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This page was updated on May 12, 2009.