Staff library at Metropolitan Southwest offers professional development resources

The newest resource for Metropolitan’s Southwest Center came from a brainstorming session around enhancing the professional growth and development of the program and clinical teams.

Program Supervisor Ruaa Jaber and Program Manager Tania Aglikin know that because staff handle a large volume of cases and myriad case types, often they can feel overwhelmed by the diverse needs of our clients and trainings are not frequently accessible or affordable.

With generous funding from the DHS state grant for our Southwest Center’s Acute Community Services and Living Room programs, now staff can access the resources they need: in a library, housed in the Living Room. (What is the Living Room?)

“The hope is that this will remove barriers or obstacles that therapists face in an evolving clinical world so that when feeling ‘stuck’, they have easy and free access to resources that could add value and skills to the work they do, thus leading to better outcomes for their clients,” says Ruaa. 

The library is a place where clinicians can access clinical material and resources useful to the work they are doing to serve many differing client populations. In addition to an online subscription for PsychologyTools.com, physical items available for checkout, including textbooks, workbooks, manuals, games, and therapeutic card decks, as well as DVDs and CDs.

Although it’s small now, this is just the beginning for the library: Ruaa says, “We are excited to see how this resource will grow over the years!”