AUSTIN, Texas – The Hogg Foundation for Mental Health at The University of Texas at Austin has awarded $1.2 million in grants to six Texas organizations to coordinate the dissemination of the Recovery to Practice (RTP) curricula across the six behavioral health professions in Texas.
RTP was launched by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) with the aim of incorporating recovery principles into the day-to-day practices of behavioral health professionals.
The goal of the Hogg Foundation RTP Grant Program is to support the dissemination of the RTP curricula across the fields of psychiatry, psychology, social work, nursing, peer support and addiction counseling in Texas. The six awardees have each been granted $200,000 over four years. Grantees’ activities will parallel and build upon the best practices of the national RTP development process. The core of RTP is comprehensive, discipline-focused training on recovery-oriented principles and practices.
“The Recovery to Practice initiative is helping to catalyze a national paradigm shift, in the behavioral health professions, toward a recovery-based model,” said Dr. Octavio N. Martinez, Jr., executive director of the Hogg Foundation and associate vice president for diversity and community engagement at The University of Texas at Austin. “We are thrilled as a foundation to support these six organizations in bringing RTP to Texas.”
The six Recovery to Practice grantees are:
- American Psychiatric Nurses Association, Texas Chapter – To assess the status of recovery knowledge, education and practice of psychiatric-mental health nurses in Texas, and to deliver the RTP nursing curriculum throughout the state.
- Mental Health Resource of Texas/Via Hope – To coordinate the dissemination of RTP among Certified Peer Specialists (individuals with experiential knowledge of mental illness and recovery), and to work to ensure the seamless integration of RTP into existing certification and endorsement training.
- Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Department of Biomedical Sciences – To implement the Texas Recovery to Practice in Psychiatry Program, which will work to educate psychiatry residents in RTP throughout the state, as well as to train psychiatrists working in key mental health centers and the four largest state psychiatric inpatient hospitals.
- University of North Texas, Department of Disability & Addiction Rehabilitation – To provide RTP training to current addiction counselors using a “train the trainer” model that is both face-to-face and web-based, as well as to develop a website that provides resources and support for an online learning community.
- The University of Texas at Arlington, School of Social Work – To utilize its considerable experience in social work mental health education, as well as its expertise in developing and implementing training programs, to facilitate the dissemination of RTP among social work professionals in Texas.
- The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio – To develop and implement a multi-phase effort to disseminate the RTP psychology curriculum throughout Texas, including: consultation with the national RTP developer (American Psychological Association), an environmental scan of the psychology field among the state’s universities and doctoral-level programs and internships, and on-going support to sub-awardees for RTP dissemination activities.
The Hogg Foundation advances recovery and wellness in Texas by funding mental health services, policy analysis, research and public education. The foundation was created in 1940 by the children of former Texas Governor James S. Hogg and is part of the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement at The University of Texas at Austin.