Report on Core Competencies For Substance Abuse Professionals
The Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA), Workfrce Development Division, has produced a draft report on core competencies for Canada’s substance abuse professionals.
The report starts with a useful general definition of knowledge and skills:
Competencies are identifiable capabilities that can be measured for effective performance. A competency may be made up of knowledge and/or skills defined as follows:
Knowledge is awareness, information, or understanding about facts, rules, principles, guidelines, concepts, theories or processes needed to successfully perform a task. The knowledge may be concrete, specific, and easily measurable or more complex, abstract, and difficult to assess. Knowledge is acquired through learning and experience (Marrelli, 2001; Mirabile, 1997). A skill is a capacity to perform mental or physical tasks with a specified outcome. Similar to knowledge, skills can range from highly concrete and easily identifiable tasks, such as completing a checklist during an assessment interview, to those that Core Competencies for Canada’s Substance Abuse Professionals Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse | June 2007 page 3 of 22 are less tangible and more abstract, such as managing a program evaluation process (Lucia and Lepsinger, 1999).
The report is general, with some Canadian features such as as section on dealing with substance abuse in aboriginal populations.
The CSSA has provided an email for feedback: competencies@ccsa.ca
The CSSA has also provided a blog for feedback: http://competenciesconsultation.blogspot.com/
The DaytaTree Team