The Academy for Professional Excellence is comprised of seven programs with each program designed to meet the specific training and technical assistance needs for the human services community in the Southern California Region.

At its inception, the Academy began delivering one program, the Public Child Welfare Training Academy (PCWTA). PCWTA’s primary mission was to administer child welfare training to newly hired social workers in five Southern California counties.

Since then, the Academy has established many more programs to provide training, curriculum development, research, evaluation, consulting services, and technical assistance.

The seven programs of the Academy for Professional Excellence are:

• The Public Child Welfare Training Academy (PCWTA) is a Title IV-E funded public child welfare training program that develops and delivers comprehensive, competency-based, in-service trainings to the 3,000 public child welfare staff and community based organizations throughout the five Southern California counties, including: Imperial, Orange, Riverside, San Bernardino, and San Diego.
• The Southern Area Consortium of Human Services (SACHS), a county-university partnership, is a consortium of county human service directors and directors of the Schools of Social Work in the Southern California Region. SACHS provides a forum for its members to discuss and develop strategies for issues facing public human services by engaging in strategy discussions, research, policy development, executive development, and succession planning.
• Leaders in Action (LIA) is an executive development training program for upper level managers aspiring to executive positions in Southern California county human service agencies.
• The Tribal STAR (Successful Transitions to Adult Readiness) project is a federally funded project that provides interdisciplinary training and technical assistance to communities working to build collaborative partnerships to improve outcomes for Tribal youth who are transitioning from foster care.
• Project MASTER (Multi-disciplinary Adult Services Training and Evaluation for Results) is a first step towards the establishment of an Adult Protective Services (APS) training academy that will provide standardized, advanced level training for APS workers throughout the state of California.
• Behavioral Health Education and Training Academy (BHETA) is a contract of San Diego County Mental Health. Initiated February 2007, this program is designed to provide San Diego County Behavioral Health System with training that will increase competency in culture, recovery, and resiliency as required to outreach, assess, and treat severely mental ill adults, children, and their families.
• The Network for Excellence in Human Services (NEHS) provides consultation, training, and technical assistance to address challenges faced by health and human service agencies and community-based social service agencies.

This year the Academy celebrates its 10th year of service in Southern California. The Academy continues to pursue new funding streams to expand our services and find new innovative solutions for health and human service professionals.