The BHWD Initiative is pleased to offer a comprehensive toolkit for creating or growing mentored internship programs (MIP) at behavioral health organizations in California. The Building The Behavioral Health Workforce: A Toolkit for Mentored Internship Programs builds on the success of the BHWD MIP project to guide your organization in creating a MIP that benefits both interns and your organization.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or enhancing an existing program, this toolkit provides practical guidance, customizable tools, and real-world examples to help you plan, attract, train, and retain top talent with mentored internships.
Between 2021 and 2025, DHCS invested nearly $100 million to create MIPs at 166 behavioral health service providers across the state. The investment ensured all internships were paid experiences, removing financial barriers and promoting more equitable access to these opportunities, while also providing training for organizations to create their internship programs, supporting mentors and organizations to build sustainable programs that would outlast the project’s funds.
The program itself was incredibly successful, onboarding more than 5,600 interns, 660 mentors, and 870 staff (including regular staff hired to support the expanded MIP project and interns hired at the end of their internships). Interns in the program came from a range of educational levels, including high school, community college, bachelor’s, master’s, doctorate, and post-doctorate programs. The effect of the hiring of new staff in support of the MIP, the training of mentors, the influx of interns, and the opportunities through the MIP for staff training was increased skill and capacity within the workforce. Additionally, the MIPs fostered intentional and strategic partnerships that ensure a viable pipeline across California, including county and urban, regional, and rural communities. These efforts resulted in hundreds of new partnerships—formal and informal, clinical and nonclinical—that set the stage for sustainable growth within California’s behavioral health workforce.
This toolkit can help other organizations apply the incredible lessons learned and practical strategies developed during the BHWD MIP project to their own MIPs.