EXPANDING TRAINING OPTIONS FOR EARLY INTERVENTION PERSONNEL - DEVELOPING A STATEWIDE STAFF MENTORING SYSTEM

The availability of qualified personnel presents a substantial challen ge to implementing early intervention systems. Neither new nor current personnel necessarily will have received training specific to this po pulation. Because of the large number of personnel involved, states de veloping training opportunities to address this need have relied prima rily on large-scale inservice and conference formats. These formats, h owever, may not be appropriate for achieving the degree of change need ed to bring about possibly pervasive alterations in skill and values. The training process described in this article, staff mentoring, was d eveloped as one option for providing a more personalized, intensive ap proach to training. Evaluation results are presented for the initial p eriod of developing the process and for the first eight trainer-traine e dyads to complete the process.