In response to your request, the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction (CCSA) is pleased to provide you an early, embargoed copy of our updated Behavioural Competencies for Canada’s Substance Use Workforce, as well as the first video in the competencies training video series, so that you can have advance access to these materials. We hope that they support you and your team during these challenging times as many staff are being mobilized to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
CCSA’s behavioural and technical competencies describe the necessary behaviours, skills and knowledge required for both regulated and unregulated professionals who work with people who use substances.
As existing staff are re-deployed, new staff are recruited and multidisciplinary teams are mobilized to respond to the growing challenges and evolving needs across mental health and substance use services, CCSA’s competencies, videos and tools provide a guide to how a competency-based framework can support organizations for:
- Interviewing
- Hiring
- Performance coaching and management
- Training
- Curriculum development
- Professional development
We recommend that the Behavioural Competencies be used together with the Technical Competencies, guides and tools, to be released in the spring of 2021. The full toolkit can be adapted, adopted or tailored for specific populations and organizations, and varying contexts.
With the input and expertise of subject-matter experts, advisory group members, consultants, leaders, and people with lived and living experience and their families and friends from across the country, these competencies have been revised to reflect up-to-date knowledge, best practices and language from the substance use field.
The first of three competencies training videos explains how a competency-based framework and CCSA’s Behavioural and Technical Competencies for Canada’s Substance Use Workforce can be helpful for your organization during this critical time. Watch it here.
While our competencies team continues to work to complete the updates to the technical competencies, the technical competencies and tools in their previous version from 2014 are available to use at your discretion. To stay informed on the release of our completed competencies and toolkits, please subscribe to the workforce development mailing list.
We hope that this early release of the Behavioural Competencies and the training video will be helpful to you and your organization during these demanding times.