There is an inadequate supply of mental healthcare providers serving youth and children. Coupled with increasing demand for services, this has caused extended wait times for therapy or counseling appointments. Our program recruits, supports, and retains licensed mental health professionals in Lancaster County. We do this through our Lancaster Clinical Supervision Collaborative (LCSC). This program provides continuing education for clinical supervisors, and training and supervision for program fellows (license-eligible professionals with master’s degrees).
Ultimately, this will shorten the time for mental health providers with master’s degrees to obtain licensure in clinical mental health professions (i.e., LCSW, LPC, MFT, Psych-NP) and improve the quality of clinical supervision for licensure hours.
Successful First Year
Our first seven fellows completed the required number of clinical supervision hours through our program to take board exams for licensure as mental healthcare providers. Five of these are:
– COBYS Family Services: Rebekah Bowland, supervised by Tracy Bosis, LCSW
– Community Services Group: Tiana Kelly and Kristin Zeiders, supervised by Kory Anderson, PsyD
– Thoughtful Wellness: Matthew Harding, supervised by Shanna Scott-Klunk, LCSW, ACS
– New Journeys: Kaity Sollenberger, supervised by Laurie Schein, LCSW
“The initial year of this grant for the supervision collaborative had more successes for us than originally anticipated once the pandemic set in,” Shanna Scott-Klunk, LCSW, of Thoughtful Wellness said.
“We added a new fellow who came to us with some supervision hours already acquired elsewhere, where she was expected to pay back what she had accumulated so far upon leaving the agency. She expressed appreciation that this opportunity was available, so she could meet her goals without feeling held back by any strings attached to the supervision hours.” Scott-Klunk said that, in addition to echoing the same gratitude, social workers are notoriously underappreciated in society in terms of pay for the amount of work. This collaborative helps them enter the field with less financial burden.
Fellow Kaity Sollenberger, supervised by Laurie Schein, LCSW, said, “I not only had access to free supervision, which was a big financial relief to myself and my agency, but I also had the freedom to use some of the grant money towards some trainings that have helped me learn new skills … It would have taken much longer to get fully licensed if I did not have the grant’s help.”
Check out LNP’s article about this program.
Applications for new program participants open at lohf.org/lcsc on January 15, 2022. They must be submitted by March 15. View the program whitepaper to learn details of how the program works.
Thanks, in part, to a generous grant from the Steinman Foundation, our LCSC program has been funded for 3 years, and completed its first year. The average cost to assist one fellow per year is $4,000.
Donations are welcome and will help us serve more agencies, fellows and, ultimately, more kids who urgently need mental healthcare.