Approach and Services
The Colorado System of Care (CO-SOC) is a comprehensive, community-based wraparound approach that provides Intensive Behavioral Health Services (IBHS) to children and youth with complex or high acuity behavioral health needs. With a focus on family stability and reducing reliance on residential placements, CO-SOC delivers services such as:
- Intensive Care Coordination (ICC)
- Intensive Home-Based Treatment (IHBT)
As demand for these services continues to grow, so does the need to expand and strengthen Colorado’s behavioral health workforce.
To address this need, the Workforce Capacity Center (WCC) was established at Colorado State University (CSU). The WCC supports provider certification and training in evidence-based treatment models, and oversees workforce development efforts across the state. Through strategic initiatives, the WCC helps ensure that CO-SOC providers can deliver timely, evidence-informed, high-quality, and culturally responsive care to Colorado’s children, youth and families.
Core Functions of the WCC
Certification: Establishes standardized processes to verify that providers meet requirements to deliver CO-SOC services.
Training: Provides and oversees training in CO-SOC models, including the knowledge, skills, and frameworks required for certification.
Practice Improvement: Supports structured efforts to align provider practices with evidence-based and fidelity standards.
- Coaching: Offers ongoing, proactive, relationship-based support to help providers or teams reflect, set goals, and develop skills through guided observation, feedback, and conversation.
- Technical Assistance (TA): Delivers targeted support organizations or teams to strengthen the implementation of CO-SOC services.
- Fidelity Monitoring: Measures how closely services are delivered according to CO-SOC models using structured tools (e.g., fidelity checklists, observation protocols). Results inform CO-SOC certification, performance improvement and technical assistance.
Reporting: Tracks data on progress and activities and provides regular reports to
Workforce development: Supports behavioral health workforce recruitment, retention, and provider expansion, with an emphasis on rural and frontier communities.
The WCC is funded and supported by the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing and the Colorado Behavioral Health Administration. It is housed within the CSU School of Social Work and works in partnership with the CSU Office of Engagement and Extension.
Workforce Capacity Center Team
The Workforce Capacity Center (WCC) team at Colorado State University comprises dedicated professionals from the School of Social Work, Human Development and Family Studies department, and the Office of Engagement and Extension (OEE).
OEE leads WCC’s outreach efforts and is conducting a landscape analysis of the current behavioral health workforce in Colorado. The landscape analysis team assesses current behavioral health workforce skills, credentials, and experience to identify gaps and inform outreach strategies and policy recommendations. WCC’s collaboration with OEE fosters partnerships with Extension’s network throughout Colorado to support behavioral health workforce recruitment, retention, and provider expansion, particularly in rural and frontier communities.
Pictured from left: Melanie Marin, Nate Riggs, Marc Winokur, Hope Cornelis-Moore, and Aubrie Radford
