Initiative to boost behavioral health workforce sends adults to school

CENTRAL FALLS – One cohort of Rhode Island College students looks a little different than other graduate student cohorts – they’ve got more gray hair and more lived experience.

Through the Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner’s Health Profes- sional Equity Initiative, about two dozen working paraprofessionals are pursuing a masters of social work at RIC in the evenings.

Among them is Silvia Adames, a 51-year-old student from the Dominican Republic who now lives in Providence and works at Blackstone Valley Community Health Care in Central Falls.

In addition to tuition assistance and a class schedule that accommodates full-time employment, the program also provides technology, child care, transportation and other support to address any barriers that might keep students out of the classroom.

Adames said she’s wanted to go back to school since she came to the U.S. but was never able to afford to be a full-time student. Before immigrating, she was an accountant, but once she received her Certified Nursing Assistant and began working with patients, she fell in love with the field.

“They have so much to learn, they have so many needs,” she said. “I felt like I was there for a reason.”

She found out about the Health Professional Equity Initiative through her supervisor at Blackstone Valley Community Health Care, listened in on an info

session and decided it was exactly the opportunity she had been waiting for. When she found out she was accepted, she said, “I was happy, I was jumping.”

In many ways, Adames is the target candidate for the program, which was designed to remove systemic barriers and expand the “linguistic, racial and ethnic diversity” of health care professionals working in behavioral health services.

But returning to school after 27 years came with its own challenges. Adames said she struggled with things like registering for classes online and writing term papers in APA style, and would’ve benefitted from a “RI College 101” class that went over some of the basic expectations.

“I was crying every single day,” she said. “That kind of stuff, that was hard for me.”

Luckily, Adames had the support of her husband, three daughters and a granddaughter, her coworkers and supervisors at Blackstone Valley Community Health Care and her peers in the program, who are in the same position of balancing a full work day with evening classes and assignments.

“All the words of encouragement – it was like, I can’t go back,” she said. “It’s a lot of support. It’s amazing.”

Once she got the hang of being a student again, Adames said she has found the classes themselves to be fascinating, especially because much of what she is learning, she has seen firsthand through her work at Blackstone Valley Community Health Care. She also said she has learned a lot from discussions with her classmates and finds inspiration in their life stories.

“Being a social worker is just that – respect everyone’s opinion,” she said. “It’s like an opportunity to practice in the field. Everyone has a different background. First semester, it was like a family. We have differences here and there but in the end, it’s fine.”

Another key part of the Health Professional Equity Initiative is supporting career pathways, particularly because a master’s degree in social work from an institution accredited by the Council on Social Work Education is required to become a licensed clinical social worker. Moving from a community health worker to a clinical social worker would be a promotion for Adames, and she said she plans to stay at Blackstone Valley Community Health Care when she graduates in 2025, where she can retain many of her current patients.

One of the things that surprised her was learning “all the different positions we can have as a social worker,” she said. She anticipates using her credentials and her experience to get involved in policy making and advocate for her patients.

“I have the position to speak for them and fight for them,” she explained.

Though her position has brought her into contact with many different communities, she said she feels strongly that more needs to be done to aid the elderly population in the state.

“To me, they are the people that most suffer,” she said.

She recalled an example of a case she sees often – a man who had to get a part-time job to make ends meet but who was then ineligible for certain aid and services because of the additional income. She also got a sense of the needs of the community as a volunteer for Project HELLO, an initiative from the RI Office of Healthy Aging that connects isolated older adults, especially those whose first language is not English, with people who would chat with them on the phone.

Adames and her cohort is expected to complete the 62-credit program in 2025. Since the program is funded from a one-time federal American Rescue Plan Act grant, it’s unclear whether there will be cohorts to follow, but the foundational program, RI Reconnects, from the Office of the Postsecondary Commissioner, applies the same model to help adults return to school for a variety of credentials.

“I’m really grateful that I’m one of the people selected in the program,” Adames said. “Everybody has their own story.”