Office of Mental Health

Training of Direct Care Staff at Psychiatric Facilities

The Office of Mental Health (OMH) provides inpatient and community-based services at more than 60 facilities across the State. All direct care staff at these facilities are required to receive various training courses. We examined whether certain of these courses (e.g., Preventing and Managing Crisis Situations, Infection Control, and Incident Reporting and Investigation) were provided as required and found that they were not. On the basis of our random sample of direct care staff, we estimated that the requirements for these courses were not met by between 6 and 31 percent of OMH’s direct care staff. Moreover, at some facilities, the rate of noncompliance was very high (e.g., at one psychiatric center, the course in Preventing and Managing Crisis Situations was not provided to 60 percent of the direct care staff in our sample). We recommended that compliance with training requirements be monitored more closely by OMH managers.

For a complete copy of Report 2001-S-57 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.
For a copy of the associated follow-up report click here.