NTTAC’s core partners have extensive national and international expertise in many TTA approaches and subjects.

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Learn more about NTTAC’s content areas and how TTA is conveyed for each:

• Clinical Best Practices, Wraparound, and Workforce Development
• Cultural and Linguistic Competence
• Early Intervention and Behavioral Health Integration
• Family Engagement and Leadership
• Policy, System Design, and Financing
• Tribal Systems of Care Support
• Youth Engagement and Leadership

Clinical Best Practices, Wraparound, and Workforce Development

A skilled workforce is one of the cornerstones of a sustainable system of care. NTTAC offers TTA on human resource development that spans the many systems of care roles, implementation drivers, skill development areas, and necessary organizational and system supports.

NTTAC’s TTA activities for clinical best practices, wraparound, and workforce development focus on:

• Clinical best practices: Providing TTA on best evidence-based, evidence-informed, and promising practices in children’s behavioral health
• Wraparound: Providing TTA on policy, finance, workforce development, research and evaluation, and health information technology
• Allocation of staff resources: Helping administrators and managers develop job descriptions and program plans that reflect key functions
• Staff selection: Providing TTA on effective staff recruitment and interview techniques that help employers hire the right people and reduce staff turnover
• Training selection: Providing assistance with selecting the best training option for a specific evidence-based service, skill, or strategy
• Coaching and certification: Providing assistance with developing a systematic coaching approach that is based on validated measures and leads to certification of staff competency
• Use of technology: Implementing approaches that leverage technology-enabled communication options, virtual coaching collaboration, and a virtual training center and coaching platform
• Health information technology: Providing assistance in selecting, developing, or customizing electronic health record (EHR) products
• Developing centers of excellence: Offering expertise on funding and developing such centers
• Evaluation, fidelity assessment, and quality assurance (QA): Measuring selection and development of tailored evaluation, fidelity assessment, and QA plans

Cultural and Linguistic Competence (CLC)

CLC is critical to reducing behavioral health disparities and improving access to high-quality behavioral health care. It’s an essential part of health care that is respectful of and responsive to the needs of our diverse children, youth, and families.

NTTAC focuses on strategies and resources that respond to changing demographics and social climates. The goal of this approach is to reduce, eliminate, and prevent discrimination and inequities in behavioral health care.

Early Intervention and Behavioral Health Integration

This content area focuses on early identification of behavioral health issues and timely intervention through appropriate behavioral health services and supports. These strategies involve implementing services and supports for young children and their families, as well as integrating behavioral health services into the systems and settings in which these children and families function.

NTTAC’s TTA activities for early intervention and behavioral health integration focus on:

• Early intervention for young children
• Integration of behavioral health into primary care
• Integration of behavioral health into schools
• Integration of behavioral health and developmental disabilities services
• Mental Health First Aid

Family Engagement and Leadership

The Family Run Executive Director Leadership Association (FREDLA), a NTTAC core partner, provides TTA on all aspects of family support.

Through its pool of family-run organization leaders across the country, FREDLA supports family involvement and collaborations between family-run organizations and systems of care. FREDLA provides TTA on many topics, including:

• Engaging families and building family voice
• Developing and financing family-run organizations
• Peer support practice models
• Strategic planning
• Peer connection across family organizations 

Policy, System Design, and Financing

NTTAC focuses on policies and reform efforts at the federal, state, and local levels that affect service delivery for children, youth, and young adults with behavioral health challenges and their families.

Policy, system design, and financing topics that NTTAC addresses include:

• Medicaid: Customizing Medicaid re-design and health reforms for children, youth, and young adults with behavioral health challenges and those in child welfare
• Title IV-E Child Welfare Waivers: Coordinating with Medicaid reforms
• Grant administration: Managing specific requirements of federal grants, such as the Mental Health Block Grant and Substance Use Prevention and Treatment Block Grant, and leveraging these funds
• Purchasing models: Implementing value-based purchasing arrangements and use of case rates
• Financing and utilization analyses: Analyzing child behavioral health service use and expenses across child-serving systems
• Cost-benefit analyses: Designing and implementing cost-benefit analyses related to home- and community-based services and evidence-based practices
• Return on Investment (ROI): Measuring ROI related to the provision of home- and community-based care and intensive care coordination using fidelity wraparound
• Sustainability: Designing and implementing cross-agency financing strategies to sustain children’s behavioral health reforms
• Governance:Supporting decision-making and oversight structures involving day-to-day operations, as well as system of care governance
• System, community, and population considerations: Identifying focus populations using prevalence and utilization data, qualitative data, state and community priorities, and other factors

Tribal Systems of Care Support

NTTAC provides TTA to tribal grantees and communities that is culturally responsive to their needs. The Native Indian Child Welfare Association (NCIWA), a NTTAC core partner provides this TTA.

NICWA’s approach is to help find and build on solutions and resources already available in the community. NICWA empowers local leaders, program people, and advocates in creating and implementing their own solutions to local problems.

Youth Engagement and Leadership

Youth engagement is a key part of systems transformation and youth-driven care. Likewise, youth voices are an essential value in the systems of care philosophy.

Youth M.O.V.E. National (YMN) is a youth-driven advocacy organization that promotes young people’s efforts to create positive systems change. As a NTTAC core partner, YMN facilitates peer learning and provides TTA on:

• Youth recruitment, retention, training, and leadership
• Youth advocacy
• Strategic and sustainability planning for youth engagement
• Youth peer support