Celeste Seibel, Systems of Care Institute trainer & consultant.
Achieve My Plan (AMP) is a program geared towards creating empowering interventions for youth and young adults who experience mental health challenges and are involved in one or more youth-serving systems. AMP works with providers to build their skill sets in a way that can best serve the youth they are working with. In AMP trainings, providers gain knowledge and skills in how to work with young people that support them to find their voice, build self-determination skills, and participate in their communities in a meaningful way.
AMP provides a variety of training and materials to those they work with. Examples include material relating to peer support, guides for facilitators and team members, and ways to increase youth participation in treatment planning. There are a variety of models that can be implemented in order to best meet a range of needs.
Celeste Seibel, Systems of Care Institute trainer & consultant, has worked within the School of Social Work for the past 15 years. In 2008 she joined the AMP team as a graduate research assistant and helped to refine the intervention, collect data, and analyze data for the pilot study of AMP. Upon graduation, in 2010, Seibel transitioned into a project management role where she led the work of a five-year randomized control trial of AMP. Part of this work included training a handful of Bachelor and Master of Social Work students to deliver the AMP model to fidelity with youth who participated in the study. This is what sparked the idea to create an AMP training for providers. In a few short months providers could learn the AMP model and begin guiding youth through the process of working towards their goals and dreams.
Although AMP was previously located in PSU’s Regional Research Institute, it is now housed at the Systems of Care Institute (SOCI). The Systems of Care Institute implements statewide and local workforce development programs that aim to improve child welfare, mental health, education, and juvenile justice related systems. In collaboration with communities, SOCI supports the transformation of systems and helps to improve the lives of youth and families.
“AMP had come to a point of outgrowing the Regional Research Institute and needed to move on to a training institute. In moving to the Systems of Care Institute, the AMP program is able to be implemented on a much wider scale in relation to workforce development,” said Brooke Rizor, director of the Systems of Care Institute.
“The transition has allowed us to take the intellectualized content of AMP and really see the effect it has on the young people that are a part of these programs,” said Rizor. The Systems of Care Institute has enhanced AMP by developing new training offerings to help support long-term sustainability of AMP and to deepen understanding of youth-driven care at the system level.
Working with AMP has allowed Seibel to see young people work towards their goals in a way that allows them to find their voice. Now, through the growth of the program, Seibel has also witnessed providers growing in their ability to be youth driven and support youth to put their ideas into action.
“When we first developed AMP as an intervention for young people it consisted of a very small number of people who were trained in the model, so to see it grow into this training program for providers all across the country has been so profound,” Seibel said.
Seibel and Rizor have been working closely with PSU’s Office of Innovation and Intellectual Property (IIP) to expand the program’s work. Once AMP began working at a larger scale, it was important to make sure that new providers were using the fidelity-based model of AMP correctly, ensuring that youth and families were getting the best kind of care.
“Bringing AMP to the Systems of Care Institute has been my first experience working with IIP and it has given me a new perspective on expanding our reach and interacting with those who could be interested in our products. IIP has been extremely patient with us while we’re learning to work in this new way,” Rizor said.
The growth and development of AMP has been especially meaningful to Seibel who has been a part of the project for so long. “As the project manager, my team and I developed, refined, and tested the intervention. Then we developed the coaching and training model for providers and began training providers all over the country. When all of that work was done, I moved on to the Systems of Care Institute in 2017. Caitlin Baird, who has been connected with AMP since 2014, and Maria Hermsen-Kritz, who has been connected with the project since 2017, took over the management of AMP at Regional Research Institute after my departure. They are both highly skilled trainers and are really passionate about AMP, too.” In 2021 both Baird and Hernsen-Kritz joined the SOCI team as trainers and consultants. “I’m so excited that AMP has moved to the Systems of Care Institute; it feels like AMP is coming home,” Seibel said.