Core competencies for frontline complex care providers
Building the complex care field Education & training Workforce development
Skills all frontline complex care providers and team leaders need across discipline, profession, and context
Building the complex care field Education & training Workforce development
Clinical practice for people with complex needs means understanding what ‘health’ actually means to them and what is aligned with their values and desired outcomes. It requires understanding their home and social environment, and having an interdisciplinary team that understands, addresses, and communicates around those needs.Toyin Ajayi, Cityblock Health
Complex care team leaders include supervisors, managers, program managers, clinical leads, and directors of teams supporting people with complex health and social needs. They are often former or current practitioners who excelled in their frontline role and were promoted – but with little support or guidance in how to succeed in a supervisory or program management role.
Successful complex care leaders must be able to supervise a team, build culture, improve operations, and build relationships across organizations. They play many roles and support their staff holistically as consultants, mentors, emotional supports, administrators, advocates, and role models.
The core competencies for complex care team leaders, released in 2024, capture the necessary knowledge, skills, and attitudes for complex care team leaders.
Domains
Learn more about the core competencies for complex care team leaders:
A certificate for complex care team leaders is currently in production. It will consist of self-paced online courses for people supervising the complex care frontline workforce and programs. It will be based on the core competencies for complex care team leaders and appropriate for supervisors and managers from all disciplines in all settings who are overseeing teams and programs supporting people with complex health and social needs.
The courses will be available to purchase in fall 2025! Sign up here to be notified about their release.
In October 2020, our National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs released the first-ever set of core competencies designed for the complex care field. The competencies apply across discipline, profession, and context, and are meant for all providers who work with people with complex health and social needs.
Domains
Learn more about the core competencies for frontline providers in complex care:
The Complex Care Certificate is a comprehensive online certificate based on the core competencies for frontline providers in complex care. It includes nine self-paced courses designed to build frontline providers’ knowledge, skills, and confidence in delivering person-centered care for people with complex needs – regardless of discipline, setting, or geography. Each course also includes a set of activities that teams can do together to apply the lessons to their population and setting, create a shared framework, and ensure common understanding.
This certificate can be started at any time and CEUs are available.
The core competencies for complex care team leaders were developed with a dedicated group of leaders of diverse backgrounds and sectors from across the country. The working group provided expert insight by participating in thoughtful debate and multiple rounds of feedback on the competencies from spring through summer 2024.
The core competencies for frontline providers in complex care were developed by a group of experts from diverse backgrounds and sectors, including complex care consumers. The core competencies working group undertook an extensive research, drafting, and consensus-building process from late 2019 through 2020, including multiple rounds of feedback from the complex care field and individuals with complex needs.
Building the complex care field Education & training Workforce development
A toolkit to guide education and training.
Building the complex care field Education & training Workforce development
Building the complex care field Education & training Workforce development
Building the complex care field Care management & redesign Community & consumer engagement