The Cultural Competence Training Center of Central NJ (CCTC) offers training for leadership and staff of state supported mental health agencies in central New Jersey. The Center offers general trainings and intensive training for leadership and agency staff to help them reduce racial and ethnic disparities in their mental health services. In 2006-2007 CCTC worked intensely with leaders and clinical staff of seven major agencies in the central region and is continuing to work with leadership of those agencies in 2007-2008. In 2006-2007 we provided training for more than 380 clinicians from 26 mental health agencies in the central region of New Jersey. In 2008 three additional agencies opted to participate in our intensive curriculum. Since its inception the Center has offered a series of “open” trainings to 400 staff and leaders of state supported mental health agencies.

Given the rapidly changing demographics of our state, the mission of the Cultural Competence Training Center of Central New Jersey is to provide training and consultation to mental health agencies in Central New Jersey to help them develop culturally competent services for their consumers, with a specific emphasis on African Americans, Latinos and Asians.

The Multicultural Family Institute (MFI)
 Developed at the Community Mental Health Center of UMDNJ in the 1970s, MFI was incorporated as a free standing non-profit educational institution in 1991 with the purpose of offering training and consultation in family systems intervention from a multicultural perspective. The Institute’s nationally known faculty and visiting faculty are renowned for their multicultural systemic training and writing on clinical work with individuals, families and culture. Institute faculty have published classic material on ethnicity, race, gender, genograms, the life cycle, and dealing clinically with loss. The Institute is committed to promoting social justice, countering the societal forces that undermine people because of race, gender, culture, class, sexual orientation or disability. The Institute has sponsored a national Culture Conference annually for the past 18 years along with other conferences and trainings focusing on culturally competent clinical assessment and intervention on a wide range of mental health topics. The Institute faculty and their professional network, including Ken Hardy, Nancy Boyd Franklin, AJ Franklin, Marlene Watson, Roxanna Llerena-Quinn, Matthew Mock, Eliana Gil, to name a few, are known internationally for their training and their contributions to cultural competence.

The Office of Prevention Services and Research (OPSR) of UMDNJ
The Office of Prevention Services and Research- Behavioral Research, co-sponsor of the CCTC, is a division of the University Behavioral HealthCare- University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, the largest health sciences university in the nation The organization’s multi-ethnic and multi-disciplinary faculty conduct an array of interrelated research, training, behavioral health prevention and promotion activities. The mission of OPSR is to prevent mental health related problems and promote the potential of children, youth and families to be healthy, happy, and productive. OPSR accomplishes this by providing research, training, policy/program consultation, and technical assistance to community- and faith-based organizations, schools, government agencies and other institutions.  Since its inception over two decades ago, OPSR has been involved in the design of culturally sensitive behavioral health interventions, the delivery of multi-cultural training and consultation, and the design, implementation, and evaluation of a number of cultural competence demonstration projects. From 2002-2005 OPSR, in partnership with the Division of Research at UMDNJ and the Multicultural Family Institute, had the distinction of being one of four nationally funded SAMSHA projects charged with designing and pilot testing a model for promoting organizational cultural competence.