National Research and Training Center (NRTC)

Online Education Courses

Beginning Spring 2007, the Center will offer Online Education Courses for a range of stakeholders in human service systems including consumers/peers, family members, providers, researchers, policymakers, students, administrators, and government officials. The topic of the first course will be Cultural Competency in Mental Health.

Webcasts and Web-Based Workshops

The Center's webcasts and web-based workshops emphasize current trends in behavioral health including evidence-based practices, consumer-operated services, and human service systems and policy issues.

• Systems Advocacy: What It Is and How to Do It

  In this presentation, an internationally known mental health advocate and community organizer discusses grassroots organizing tactics and provides information about goal-setting, creating an advocacy plan, negotiation skills, and strategy development, including "do’s and don’ts." The presentation also offers nuts-and-bolts information about effective advocacy letter-writing, phone calls to policy makers and their staffs, and how to handle face-to-face meetings. Because the basis of systems advocacy is self-advocacy, a co-presenter who has been trained in self-advocacy skills offers information about how she has put these skills into practice in her own work and life.

• Grading the Evidence for Consumer-Driven Services
  This webcast describes the evidence base for consumer-operated, delivered, and centered services, where people in recovery control the kinds of help they get, from whom, and in what settings. The evidence grading pyramid is presented along with the specific levels of evidence for models such as recovery self-management, drop-in centers, advance directives, and self-directed care. A special focus is on the results of the national multi-site research study of consumer-operated service programs or COSP, directed by people in recovery, and funded by CMHS. Speakers included: Judith Cook, Jean Campbell, Lisa Razzano.

• Put Yourself in the Driver's Seat: Getting on the Road to Self-Employment or a Job That's Right for You
  Are you ready to work, but not sure how to get started? Listen to these sessions to learn how your talents can be used in getting a job or starting your own business. Highlights include using the Internet as an employment resource, finding the right job, getting help for starting a business venture, and developing a business plan. Emphasis is on people with mental health disabilities, but anyone interested in work and entrepreneurship will find useful information in these three sessions. Speakers included: Howard Dansky, Margo Covington, and Kamile Kalina.
• Using the Internet to Promote Self-Determination & Emotional Well-Being
  This webcast featured: a discussion of how the Internet helps people with limited resources to participate in online communities and in advocacy efforts; practical guidance and information on using the Internet and software resources to seek, find, and secure a job; and a panel discussion regarding how to determine the validity and reliability of web-based resources and how the Internet can foster self-determination. Speakers included: Ed Schwartz, Howard Dansky, Sylvia Caras, Frances Priester, and Judith Cook.
• Self-Management of Psychiatric Symptoms: Taking Action to Achieve Recovery
  The featured speakers of this workshop, Suzanne Vogel-Scibilia and Mary Ellen Copeland, addressed self-management of psychiatric disabilities by teaching participants how to develop a comprehensive, individualized self monitoring and response system. This system: promotes higher levels of wellness and stability for people who experience psychiatric symptoms; decreases the incidence of severe symptoms; decreases traumatic life events and stigma caused by severe symptoms; decreases the need for costly, invasive therapies; and improves quality of life. The speakers also highlighted models and history of recovery and self-determination. A total of 115 people from around the country attended this workshop, held May 31, 2002, including mental health consumers, psychiatric survivors, family members, service providers, advocates, researchers, governmental officials, students, and faculty.
• Multiple Perspectives on Consumer/Survivor Self-Determination from Within and Outside the Services System.
  On October 12, 2001, the UIC NRTC sponsored this inaugural session for its National Self-Determination Workshop Series. The featured speakers (Judith Cook, Judi Chamberlin, David Oaks, Joseph Rogers, and Russell Pierce) addressed various aspects of self-determination, including the history of self-advocacy in the mental health consumer movement, the role of independent organizing in increasing self-determination, what helps and hinders self-determination, and advancing consumer power in communities of difference. A total of 81 people attended this workshop from around the country, including mental health consumers, psychiatric survivors, family members, service providers, advocates, researchers, governmental officials, students, and faculty. Click here to view video highlights of the workshop.