Refining the Research Questions: Small Group Report Out

1
Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1
• Are we going to take demographics on counselors
  and directors?
• What counseling workforce are we looking at?
• What does frontline staff mean?
• Recovery status, is recovery status one of the
  reasons you entered the field, use of tobacco
  products,

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1
• Educational level, cj background, licenses and
  credentialing, supports to go back to school,
  degrees/educational level, educational goals,
  what age were you when you entered the field,
  salary questions (annual vs. hourly, full vs.
  part-time), employee or contractor, benefits
  currently recd (retirement, health insurance,
  vacation, sick leave), benefits youd like to
  receive, do you plan to be in the wf 5 yrs from
  now

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1
• Tech issues do you have access to a computer at
  work, email, electronic records, web-based
  system, tele-medicine,
• First/second/third career, recovery needs, age,
  ethnicity, socio-eco status, tenure in labor
  force
• Age started working, part-time/full-time, marital
  status, of dependents, total household income,
  primary wage earner for family, number of other
  jobs?, places of employment, perceptions of other
  agencies, perceptions of labor market, of hours
  for your commute to work, where do you live
  (rural, suburban, frontier, urban) and where do
  you work
• If people are in recovery, what flavor of
  recovery are you? (12 step, methadone, etc.)
• How many agencies have you worked in?

4
Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1
• Agency demographics annual budget, marketing
  efforts, unfilled positions, where they are
  located (ex within hospitals)
• Other thoughts
• what is it that keeps the people who stay?
• Demographics of directors educational backgrounds

5
Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• We could still get some demographics, although
  some things would need to be deleted group 1
  thoughts
• We could make it simpler good operational list
  of job roles, we could find out if these are
  part-time/full-time positions, salary range, etc.
  group 2
• For more specific questions, such as ethnicity,
  we could ask what percentage of your WF are X, Y,
  Z, etc. group 2

6
Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• We could differentiate between what questions we
  ask about the main/primary/core job categories
  and what we ask about other jobs in other
  words, we could ask gender, race, and other key
  categories about their counselors and ask more
  general questions about other part-time or
  volunteer staff (the laundry list)

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• At the facility level, do we want to know
  questions about the entire facility or do we want
  to know specifics about the individuals in that
  facility?
• Include a grid of key characteristics that people
  can just check off for each role
• How do we do this w/o turning off the
  respondents?
• At what level do you want to be able to describe
  the workforce?

8
Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• What do we want the report to show - that will
  determine what data we collect?
• Less questions better than we have now
• How do we get percentages of key characteristics
  if we dont have people fill out matrices? Will
  they be guessing? Is this a question we should
  ask in focus groups?
• Bigger issue defining who provides direct
  services

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• How many people do direct services? (include
  operational def of direct services) How many
  receive direct services how many are certified?
• How many of those people are male/female, etc.?
• How many people do recovery services?
• How many of those people are XXX?
• Difficulties around defining clinical vs.
  non-clinical staff
• Should we include many specific definitions of
  job categories or should we give broad
  definitions of clinical staff vs. non-clinical
  staff?

10
Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• Defining clinical staff we could either be very
  conservative and talk about things like tx
  planning in terms how we define what it means to
  be a part of the clinical staff or we could
  include a more flexible definition that would
  capture a broader universe of workers such as the
  recovery workers

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• Get from cathy definitions of clinical and
  recovery staff
• Clinical services and recovery support services
  should we include medical staff too (given pharm
  protocols)?
• How many people are doing quality control?
  Should we separate out clinical supervision as a
  sub-category? What percentage of the counselor
  WF has supervisory responsibility?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 1 (from day 2)
• Do we need to focus this study on getting us the
  real information about what roles there are and
  if there are people doing that work? And then
  leave it to other studies to provide key
  characteristics about those individuals?
• What is the basic information we need in terms of
  demographics?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• Key points define the workforce, who are they?,
  not only clinical directors and line staff but
  also clinical supervisors
• People in recovery what is the training need?
  How flexible will the agency be if the employee
  wants further education? (i.e, time off)
• How much pre-service education in SA?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• Need for 3 different kinds of surveys
• Clinical directors may know more about future
  needs than line staff
• Is there an HR dept or any one in the agency who
  oversees the future needs of the workforce?
• How can we make sure that our SA counselors will
  be prepared to work in interdisciplinary teams?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• Workload how much paperwork, how many meetings
  (not just case load)
• WHY? clinical supervisors are really part of
  sustaining and so are the CEOs b/c of being able
  to financially support the organization
• Stigma of the profession and the stigma of the
  client and how does that affect needs for
  training and needs for support to be in the
  workforce in the future

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• This is a field that started in a more
  recovery-oriented arena and is working toward
  professionalization and how does that affect our
  training needs and needs for changing our
  perception in terms of recruitment/retention
• How do (or do they) our colleagues feel respected
  for what they do (again related to stigma)?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• Interested in developing specific questions for
  clinical supervisors
• Challenges case load issue and work load in
  general how do we change the expectations for
  education and how that impacts the feeling of
  being overwhelmed, how can we measure the
  agreement between the various levels in the
  organization and how they measure the needs of
  the organization

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• What organizational size and how this relates
  to how supportive they can be in terms of
  educational needs, HR needs, training needs, etc.
• Other thoughts questions that address the level
  to which people can do the core competencies? How
  do performance appraisals relate to this issue?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• How many vacancies they have and in which
  positions? How long does it take to fill them?
  Which have been the most difficult to fill? How
  long did the vacancies remain open?
• What do we want this workforce to know how to do?
• Process of training or continuing ed do you
  have money in your budget for training? Do you
  have someone on staff who trains on EBPs?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• What incentives do you provide to employees?
• What questions do you need to have to find out
  what training is needed for clinical supervisors
  and/or whether clinical supervisors even receive
  cs training?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 2
• Some query about issues related to cultural
  diversity do you provide a premium salary for
  bi-lingual staff, for example? Is there any
  formalized training on cultural competency? (from
  Mike S.)

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Complexity and blurriness of movement within and
  between agencies
• Compensation is not the driver, but is more
  influenced by issues of workplace culture
  procedural justice, distributive justice,
  professional autonomy,
• Frequency and quality of clinical supervision
  and, more generally, organizational management

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Aspects of compensation and benefits
• Performance based rewards (i.e., billable hours,
  small rewards at staff meetings, etc.)
• Tap into organizational opportunities for
  advancement (especially the more mom and pop
  organizations which are more inter agency
  opportunities than intra agency opportunities)

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Are there career ladder opportunities linked to
  additional education, certification, etc.?
• What is the workforce that we are studying?
• Primary client base both in past and present
  jobs

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• What the workforce looks like and how they are
  supported and movement of the individuals in and
  between organizations analysis plan maybe
  should include network analysis the behavior of
  the system itself may inform some of the needs
  questions
• Professional organizations and provider
  organizations membership and work in these may
  provide career ladder opportunities that are not
  available in small agencies

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Hiring practices and infrastructure pieces that
  help to maintain a stable system and whether
  those things are in place
• Formal methods for employee selection
• Merit or performance based system for performance
  evaluation
• Minimum standards for hiring
• At least for the core staff

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Leadership development
• Technology questions access, skills, do they
  have emails
• How many PCs in clinic and who is allowed to use
  them? What kind of internet access?
• Electronic record keeping does that have
  implications for ATTCs (SMART Treatment Planning)
  and the work we would do in training staff
• Web-based follow-up do you do electronic based
  aftercare and recovery support
• Or ask a broader question about what kind of
  follow up you do this would include telephone,
  etc.?

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Are electronic records used for more than
  billing?
• Why do we want to ask this and what is the
  implication for training?
• Does this tell us anything about computer access
  or skills?
• Limited resources need to prioritize the
  questions we want to ask

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Not just whether there are computers, but are
  they useful
• For trainings
• For further surveys if we want to do future
  studies online
• Go back to previous national survey and look at
  those questions

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Refining the Research QuestionsSmall Group
Report Out

• Question 3
• Other key trends we should consider here?
• Generational issues example younger WF
  interested in onboarding and social networking
  instead of retirement plans
• How prepared are facilities to take advantage of
  new pharmacological options?
• Electronic records
• Infrastructure questions do you have an HR dept?
  Do you have a contract with an EAP? Formality of
  recruitment mechanisms? Do you advertise on the
  web, for example?
• Is there a way of capturing what the pipelines
  are for how agencies tap into info and training
  on whatever the EBP of the moment is? (another
  piece of the do you make time for training
  questions)

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Other thoughts

• Questions related to therapeutic philosophy/tx
  philosophy recovery support provided (relapse
  prevention, continued recovery)
• Core functions provided what are the services
  provided
• Can we meet with a group of directors in
  connection with the upcoming SAAS meeting to find
  out what kinds of questions they are interested
  in and what kind of data they have access to?

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Next Steps

• SAMHSA - Sift thru all recommendationssynthesize
  info and input
• CSAT will come up w/tenative planin
  collaboration w/ Dr. Clark, ATTC, Jack, et al
• Work with external stakeholders to get buy in
• Go to SAAS meeting to do focus groups, at least
  discussion
• Also-NASADAD meeting
• Ask I-SSAT data CSAT Project Officer to speak to
  ATTC Directors to familiarize them w/I-SSAT and
  the data available

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NEXT STEPS

• I-SSAT is available on the Web for queriesnot
  available by Center
• Speak to the Directors re. the Workforce
• All Get a copy of the I-SSATS survey
• Decide whether CS is important enough to
  survey/focus group separately
• Sit down and figure out the resources and what
  the target groups are/where they are located?

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Next steps

• Thank you robert!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ET AL..