Are you looking to hire a school psychologist, school counselor or social worker? Hiring a new team member is a big decision. Learn the risks, tips, and tricks of hiring a new behavioral specialist in this hiring guide.
Behavioral health specialists help students, schools, patients, and healthcare facilities to manage the mental health and behaviors of patients and students. “Behavioral health” means that these specialists help people to adopt new, healthy behaviors that improve their well-being and success in all areas of life.
With behavioral health specialists being one of the fastest-growing healthcare professions in the U.S. today, many care facilities and schools might find themselves considering adding one of these specialists to their team in the years to come.
What is a Behavioral Health Specialist?
Behavioral health specialists provide counseling and teach techniques to help people cope with challenging situations, adopt healthier behaviors, and solve problems in their lives.
Behavioral health specialists treat challenges ranging from dangerous and unhealthy behavior to coping challenges and life challenges that hold people back in their careers and relationships. They may work in settings ranging from acute care psychiatric or substance abuse facilities to schools and primary care offices where people seek support for routine life problems.
Behavioral specialists can have different specialties and skillsets. We’ll discuss several types of behavioral health specialists that Sunbelt can help you add to your team throughout this article.
Benefits of Hiring Behavioral Health Specialists
A growing body of evidence shows that behavioral health specialists, when used properly, can improve almost any kind of outcome in almost any industry.
From helping students overcome trauma and behavioral disorders to excel in school to helping patients recover from injuries and medical crises, behavioral health specialists use the sciences of psychology and behavior to help people everywhere get better outcomes.
Here are a few specific benefits of adding a behavioral specialist to your team, whether you work in education, healthcare or just want added support for your employee wellness and team dynamics.
Behavioral Health Specialists Have a Lasting Impact
Educators and healthcare workers know the struggle of trying to help a student or patient, but feeling that their efforts aren’t working. When students and patients have behavioral problems, or are experiencing trauma, it can feel like even the best educational and medical techniques aren’t enough. So what’s the missing piece?
In the last few decades, groundbreaking findings in behavioral science have revealed the techniques that can be used to care for the thoughts, feelings, and past trauma of students and patients alike. These techniques can be used to acknowledge students’ fears and difficulties, and ultimately to teach them the tools to perform better and take the actions that lead to better life outcomes, no matter what disadvantages or conditions they might have.
The goal of a behavioral health specialty is not just to solve a problem in the moment, but to teach the student or patient to solve their own problems in the future. By teaching effective coping mechanisms and addressing limiting thoughts and feelings, treatment by a behavioral specialist is shown to have lifelong benefits for students and healthcare patients.
Behavioral health treatment is a delicate procedure, requiring a highly skilled hand. Even improper or poorly perceived comments by behavioral health specialists can lead to negative effects, or undermine the benefits of treatment. That’s why it’s important to hire the best behavioral health specialists available – preferably those with specific experience working with your type of institution, and your type of student or patient population.
That’s why Sunbelt Staffing offers you decades of hiring expertise. With over thirty years’ experience focusing exclusively on hiring the best candidates for our schools and healthcare facilities, we are experts in interviewing, candidate selection, and setting clear expectations that prepare the candidate to work with your students or patients.
Take the guesswork out of hiring for this important and potentially transformative role. We promise to make it easy and painless to add a behavioral health specialist to your team.
Behavioral Health Specialists Bridge the Connection Between Emotional Well-Being and Academic Success
A growing body of research shows that the most valuable skills we have are emotional skills.
Whether it’s regulating and calming oneself in the face of anger, fear, or frustration; or being sensitive to the needs of others as an emotionally intelligent team members, these “soft skills” make the biggest difference in areas ranging from academic success to organizational productivity.
Unfortunately, these emotional skills are not taught at all in most schools or healthcare facilities. Behavioral health is often treated as an afterthought, when in fact it may be the most powerful tool we have in our academic and medical arsenals.
By helping students and patients to understand and regulate their emotions, behavioral health specialists can create transformative changes in areas ranging from academic achievement to physical health. The goal of a behavioral health specialist is to teach these skills, and provide ongoing support while students and patients learn and practice these challenging changes to their outlook and behavior.
Improving students’ self-image and emotional skills by addressing trauma and negative thoughts has been shown to improve academic achievement and help to close the achievement gap between high- and low-performing students. If your students struggle to perform at grade level or to reach the highest national standards of excellence, a behavioral health specialist may be the missing piece your team is looking for.
Sunbelt Staffing can help your team to determine what sort of behavioral health specialist might benefit your students most. We supply behavioral specialist roles including:
- School psychologists. These specialists can identify and design interventions for learning and behavioral problems in students. They support students’ mental, emotional, and behavioral health, leading to better academic outcomes.
- School social workers. Social workers have experience in both navigating the legal system on behalf of schools and families, and providing individual and group therapy to students experiencing challenges.Social workers can improve academic outcomes by improving students’ relationships and self-image, in addition to providing any necessary legal interventions for a students’ physical well-being.
- Mental/behavioral registered nurses. These nurses can pull double duty as registered nurses with basic life support certifications, but can also perform psychological evaluations and supportive care as part of a psychiatric, ER, or rehab team.
- Special education teachers, school speech-language pathologists, and more specialties to help students who have specific challenges or disabilities.
Getting Started
Does your school or healthcare facility need a behavioral health specialist on its team?
If you don’t already have one, or if the behavioral health specialist you have is overworked and fully booked, the answer is probably “yes.”
All students and patients can benefit from behavioral health support, and those with behavior problems threatening their academic success or health and well-being absolutely need these services.
To get started, we recommend consulting with our hiring experts. Our thirty years of experience allows us to ask the right questions to help you determine what sort of behavioral specialist your team needs. If your team agrees with our assessment, we’ll help you find a behavioral health specialist to join your organization with the benefit of our expert selection staff.
To get started or ask any questions you might have, you can contact us via email, or give us a call at 800.659.1522.