A scoping review of state-sponsored mental health training programs for children and youth to support use of evidence-based treatments

Workforce training for providers in the public mental health system serving children and youth is a significant investment of state tax dollars. This is especially true for evidence-based treatments. Between 2023 and 2025 New York State partnered with New York University’s McSilver Institute for Poverty Policy and Research to scale EBTs for children, youth and families. To inform the roll-outs of these initiatives and identify key elements that could be replicated to strengthen the children’s mental health workforce in other publicly funded systems, we conducted a scoping review of current published literature on state-sponsored, children’s mental health workforce training initiatives in the U.S. This review was informed by the first five steps of Arksey and O’Malley’s methodological framework and follows the approach of iteratively refining study selection and data extraction decisions used in other health services-related scoping reviews. In the 31 included articles, initiatives were located in seventeen states and New York was the most frequently represented. The majority of articles described initiatives as originating out of an identified system need. The children’s diagnosis and evidence-based practice most frequently addressed were trauma and TF-CBT. Training activities varied widely. Eligibility criteria for participating also varied, and incentives were reported in less than half of the articles. Observational designs with a single data collection timepoint were most common, and reporting on training-related outcomes was inconsistent and unsystematic. To strengthen state-sponsored mental health workforce training requires use of consistent designs, characterization of training types, and standardized data collection procedures.