Office of Mental Health

Training of Direct Care Staff at Psychiatric Facilities (Follow-Up Review)

The Office of Mental Health (OMH) provides inpatient and community-based services at facilities across the State. All direct care staff at these facilities are required to receive various training courses. In our prior audit report 2001-S-57, we examined whether certain critical courses 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. In our follow-up review, we found that significant progress had been made by OMH officials in implementing the recommendations contained in our prior report.

For a complete copy of Report 2003-F-54 click here.
For a copy of the 90-day response click here.