King County is taking another important step toward strengthening our community behavioral health workforce and crisis response system.
The Department of Community and Human Services (DCHS) awarded the Behavioral Health Institute at Harborview Medical Center (BHI) to lead the new Crisis Training Academy, funded through the local Crisis Care Centers Levy.
Crisis care and services require specialized skills in de-escalation, risk assessment, triage decision-making, and trauma-informed practices. The academy will help recruit and train new workers in these skills, including peers with lived experience of mental health and substance use crises. It will also train current workers in navigating our expanded crisis system to provide safe and effective crisis care for everyone in King County.
DCHS intends to prioritize Crisis Training Academy resources based on three groupings of King County’s behavioral health workforce.
1) Staff working for Crisis Care Centers and Post-Crisis Follow-Up (PCFU) teams.
2) King County Behavioral Health clinical teams and outpatient workforce.
3) Social service workers who collaborate with Crisis Care Centers and PCFU teams across the crisis care continuum.
All training will align with the clinical best practices in behavioral health crisis services outlined in the Crisis Care Centers Levy Implementation Plan.
The Behavioral Health Institute was selected through a competitive Request for Proposals process. BHI is a leader in crisis response, known for advancing innovation in clinical treatment, training and research. In partnership with UW Medicine’s Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, BHI prioritizes improving equitable access to culturally and linguistically appropriate care to support underserved communities.
“We are ensuring every practitioner in our crisis system has access to a new standard of crisis care that supports King County residents both in a moment of crisis and through their longer-term recovery,” said Isabel Jones, Interim Director of DCHS’ Behavioral Health and Recovery Division. “Given BHI’s deep clinical expertise and ability to create system-wide change, they are an ideal architect of this new centralized training model.”
“We are thrilled to help realize King County’s vision for a Crisis Training Academy—something we see and experience the need for first-hand—to help teams communicate and deliver care that is consistently high-quality and more connected,” said Cara Towle, MSN RN MA, Program Director, Training, Workforce and Policy Innovation Center at BHI.
The BHI’s Training, Workforce and Policy Innovation Center will lead this body of work. Recently, the team also collaborated with the SEIU Healthcare 1199 NW Multi-Employer Training Fund (known as the Training Fund) to develop and implement an innovative statewide Behavioral Health Apprenticeship program, which the Crisis Care Centers Levy helps fund locally in King County. As of August 2025, more than 200 apprentices and 53 employers have participated.
We look forward to working with BHI as they create and launch this important new resource for the behavioral health workforce in King County later this year.
