Scholarship Winners Attend the NCCHC Correctional Mental Health Care Conference

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Six NCCHC Foundation Scholarship Fund winners and over 450 more individuals recently attended the NCCHC’s Correctional Mental Health Care Conference in Denver.

“[The conference provided] a wealth of information to bring back to work. I was especially impacted by the sessions on compassion fatigue and racial trauma. When I think of compassion fatigue, I only considered the perspective of a mental health worker. Not once did I take into account how the custody staff must feel and all that they experience,” said one of the scholarship winners, Lt. Nathan Drew, LICSW, LCSW-C, US Public Health Service. “I truly appreciated the presenter’s specific emphasis on compassion fatigue as it relates to custody staff. It helped me to begin brainstorming ways to better support our custody staff at my facility. Truly thought-provoking!”

Another winner, Kristin Kastner, RN, highlighted the “networking, empowerment, and emphasis on evidence-proven skills/tactics.”

Beyond attending the conference, the scholarship winners had an orientation with 3 mentors on-site: Sharen Barboza, PhD, CCHP-MH, chair of the NCCHC Foundation, and psychologist/consultant; Robin Timme, PsyD, CCHP-MH, CCHP-A, senior expert at Falcon Correctional and Community Services; and Walter Campbell, PhD, CCHP-MH, chief psychologist at Idaho Department of Correction.

Barboza stated, “It is incredibly important to be able to introduce individuals new to the field of correctional health care to NCCHC and all it has to offer through this scholarship program. We received hundreds of applications from clinicians and students across the country. It is so heartening to see such interest in the challenging and meaningful care we provide to those in need. It gives me hope for the future of our incarcerated patients.”

Scholarships for the National Conference on Correctional Health Care will be announced in September and applications for the Spring Conference on Correctional Health Care will open by January 15, 2023. To support the future of correctional health care, successful applicants must be students or those with less than 3 years of experience in correctional health care.