Scaling up Evidence-based Treatments in Youth Behavioral Healthcare: Social Work Licensing Influences on Task-shifting Opportunities

ABSTRACT

Youth behavioral healthcare workforce shortages have inhibited the scale-up of evidence-based treatments to address longstanding unmet needs and inequitable service coverage. Task-shifting is a strategy that could bolster workforce shortages. Legal and regulatory barriers, such as scope of practice licensing regulations, have hampered the use of task-shifting. Social workers make up the majority of the behavioral healthcare workforce in the U.S. and most social workers provide services to children and families. As such, social workers would play a pivotal role in any scale-up effort. In this guest editorial, we discuss the importance of social work licensing and use a case example to illustrate the unintended consequences that certain licensing regulations have on scaling-up evidence-based treatments via task-shifting. We conclude with recommendations on how social workers could be involved in task-shifting efforts to scale-up evidence-based treatments.

KEYWORDS:

• scale-up
• children and youth
• behavioral health
• task-shifting
• social work licensing
• occupational licensing

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Mental Health [R21MH102544,T32MH19960].