PEWL Expands Its Support of New Yorkers in the COVID Era

As the fog of the COVID-19 virus and its devastating impact slowly lifts from New York City, the CUNY SPS Office of Professional Education and Workplace Learning (PEWL) continues its unyielding work of providing programs to help New Yorkers.

The new Academy for Community Behavioral Health (the Academy) is a shining example of the impact PEWL will make over the next two years with $2.3 million in initial funding from the City.

PEWL, an integral unit of CUNY SPS, has partnered with the Mayor’s Office of Community Mental Health (OCMH) and the Mayor’s Office for Economic Opportunity (NYC Opportunity) to create the Academy that will equip social service providers to address behavioral health needs of the communities they serve. In the next two years, the Academy will train up to 5,000 staff at community-based organizations (CBOs), City and State agencies, and other social service providers to deliver proactive and culturally responsive behavioral health support.

“The pandemic has significantly increased behavioral health challenges in New York City, and some communities face greater challenges than others” said Elise Tosatti, the Academy’s program director. “CBOs and other social service providers already encounter a range of behavioral health issues in their everyday work and have meaningful opportunities to provide care. Too often, though, social service providers don’t receive the skills and support they want and need to address behavioral health. Rather than wait for people to access traditional clinics—if they ever do—the Academy’s learning programs aim to help providers bring behavioral health into settings where people already spend time and have trusted relationships.”

In May 2021, Mayor Bill de Blasio and First Lady Chirlane McCray announced Mental Health for All, a new comprehensive plan to deliver universal access to mental health support to all New Yorkers. The plan builds on the work of ThriveNYC and other City agencies and lays out a path to ensure that mental health is a permanent part of City government’s response.

The Academy is a part of this wide-ranging plan with a particular focus on 33 communities that have been identified by the City’s Taskforce on Racial Inclusion and Equity (TRIE) as those most affected by COVID-19 and having higher rates of health and socio-economic disparities.

These communities bear higher burdens than others. Factors like structural racism and social and economic inequality can drive higher rates of distress and mental health disorders, while making it more difficult to access care. The pandemic has exposed and exacerbated disparities among people of color, people with low incomes, and others, with mental illness a growing concern.

CBOs and social service providers play critical roles in addressing these overlapping crises with the communities most affected, Tosatti noted. To help support their efforts, the Academy will offer a variety of programming to social service providers and community-based organizations to advance behavioral health integration starting in Fall 2021.

These include a Speaker and Conversation Series, which will feature events highlighting promising practices and community voices in the field, and a Brief Learning Series, which will be a series of courses designed to assist staff in applying specific helpful practices. Based on stakeholder engagement completed in FY21, Fall 2021 topics for these series will include addressing grief and loss, managing stress and building resilience, and community healing strategies for intergenerational and mass traumas. Additional topics will be added throughout 2022 and 2023.

The Academy will also offer Skills-Based Certificate Programs that equip social service providers to apply evidence-based practices—such as Motivational Interviewing or Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT)—in their everyday work. These programs will provide organizational leaders and staff with comprehensive services that will include training, ongoing coaching, and technical support. Skills-Based Certificate Programs will also include tracks to develop qualified supervisors and trainers in community settings. All programming will be offered virtually.

Tosatti added that the Academy will also look to contract with City and State agencies to develop custom learning programs that can reach a larger scale of learners or tailor programming to the specific needs of the populations that they serve.

“We are grateful for this opportunity to support social service providers as they address intersecting mental health, social, and economic challenges with community members,” reflected Tosatti. “There was urgency for these services before the pandemic and there is urgency now. Providers and community members alike are affected by multiple collective traumas and the disparate impacts of COVID-19. We aim to empower social service staff with good-fit behavioral health skills and support to manage the emotional demands of their work so they can in turn help community members heal.”

In an effort to help students achieve faster results, PEWL’s Advanced Certificate in Project Management program was condensed in the fall and is now offered as three consecutive seven-week courses.

“If we’re trying to prepare people so that they can seek better job opportunities, you don’t want them to wait a year and a half to make that happen,” said Dr. Vicki Caruana, academic program manager. “This is a way to be responsive to that and to the needs of the field.” The program had previously taken students 18 months to complete.

Since the launch of the CUNY SPS program, hundreds have earned the online certificate in order to further their careers. This certificate program develops students’ knowledge and ability to apply project management standards, techniques, and practices and helps graduates pursue careers as project managers in fields such as information technology, financial services, construction, management consulting, government, non-profit, and health care.

“The program is centered around real-world techniques for project management and an immersive environment allows the cycle of learning to happen more quickly, which means you get to apply the concepts in your work situation, and it is that learn-apply cycle that solidifies the knowledge building,” said Dr. Barbara Edington, CUNY SPS faculty who co-founded the project management program in 2005.

“The Accelerated Project Management Certificate demonstrates CUNY SPS’s commitment to meeting our students where they are, and offering—to the best of our ability— programs that support flexibility towards completion,” said Amy Perez, executive director of the CUNY SPS Office of Professional Education and Workplace Learning (PEWL), which oversaw the program.

The Project Management Institute expects 22 million new project management job openings through 2027. By teaching students to apply globally recognized project management standards, techniques, and practices, the program seeks to respond to employer demand for people who can deliver projects of a specified scope on time and within budget, as well as to prepare students for roles as project managers in a variety of fields.

In Fall 2020, the program received the prestigious CDA Gold Standard, following a quality review of its training and student services by the Council for Professional Recognition.

“The Gold Standard certification process allowed us to evaluate our program through a strength-based lens,” said Claudine Campanelli, the program administrator of CDA and CPAC (Children’s Program Administrator Credential) at CUNY SPS. “We demonstrated that competency-based instruction leading to credit-bearing certificates and credentials can be implemented within higher education institutions successfully and are meaningful to the early childhood workforce.”

With this certification, CUNY SPS joins an exclusive list of schools and training programs around the country that provide Gold Standard-recognized CDA training opportunities.

“The CDA Gold Standard is a prestigious recognition of the credit-bearing CDA program at CUNY SPS,” said Amy Perez, PEWL executive director. “We are the only college in the state and one of seven in the nation to have this designation. This accreditation would not have been possible without the outstanding leadership of Claudine Campanelli and her dedication to extraordinary early childhood education.”

Separately, the CDA program also welcomed news that three of its students, inspired by a class assignment, self-published books for children.

Terry Ammons Jr., Kadeatrice Lugo, and Carlos Advincola Jr. say it began when their instructor Teresa Perez, during the Fall 2020 section of the course Child Development - Birth to Five Years, asked the class to develop a bibliography of developmentally appropriate books on a variety of topics related to children’s lives and challenges they may face.

The three now-alums all had ideas for their own books and took the assignment a step further.

Ammons found the inspiration for his children’s book from his own life. At the age of 29, he was going to be a big brother. His mom was pregnant with his little sister. His friends teased him at the time and asked if he was jealous of the new sibling, but then Ammons began to think about this.

“What if I were much younger and this happened?” he said. “How would I feel about that?” His children’s book Helpful, responsible, Me! was born from that experience.

Lugo’s book was originally a poem for children that she wrote on the back of an envelope about COVID-19.

“Everyone kept telling me that I better get it published soon,” she said. With support from her class, Lugo self-published her book When the “C” Virus Came to Town.

Advincola’s book, inspired by his personal life and co-written with his mom Nancy, and illustrated by his brother Josue, is about what it’s like to come to a different country for school. Lucy La Chihuahua Arrives to Nueva York will be published in the coming months.

“The creativity and innovation these students put into their projects to create children’s books that are now available to all—it is truly inspiring and all the while showcasing the originality and creativity of our CDA program,” said Amy Perez.