The classroom is a clinic at Washington's WIC training center - Women, Infants, and Children's programs

Food and Nutrition, July, 1986 by Tino Serrano

The Classroom Is a Clinic at Washington's WIC Training Center

WIC ETC has a split personality. It's a WIC clinic with a caseload of about 300, and a training center for WIC staff from all across Washington State.

WIC ETC stands for WIC Education and Training Center. Located near Lacey, just a few miles from the state capital in Olympia, the center has been in operation less than a year, but already has 45 graduates working in 23 local WIC clinics--43 percent of the clinics in the state.

The new facilityk, specifically designed for its dual role, opened its clinic doors in March, 1985. Within 6 months, the operational bugs were worked out and classes for clerks and certifiers began. Today classes range from week-long basic orientation courses to 1- to 2-day skills classes, with a good number of "by special request' training activities sprinkled in.

Students at WIC ETC learn their lessons through a combination of formal classroom instruction and hands-on supervised clinic experience working with WIC clients. The state agency feels the instruction and immediate application is a good mix.

Courses based on local needs

WIC ETC came into being when the state agency staff, monitoring local clinic operations, realized a number of common problem areas kept cropping up in clinics throughout the state. Needed was a more effective, consistent way of training local agency staff, especially new employees.

The problem areas identified during monitoring visits became the basis for WIC ETC's week-long orientation course for newly hired clerks and certifiers. The course is available to all new employees at the option of the local agencies, who are encouraged to send their clerks and certifiers at the same time so they will learn as a team.

The course is scheduled once a month and limited to six people, enabling the students to work closely with the three regular staff members.

In addition to the basic course, a growing number of 1- to 2-day courses are available for local agency paraprofessionals who'd like to learn or brush up on specific skills, such as issuing vouchers or taking body measurements. Clinic supervisors sometimes request refresher training in areas identified as problem spots during monitoring visits or audits.

Lead instructor Jacque Beard and the three other instructors, who double as the clinic staff, develop training programs as needed, and hope to soon have a bank of basic training curricula and materials. In March, they began offering a 1-day class for nutritionists on counseling high-risk clients, and group nutrition education.

Center helps in many ways

Marilyn Connon, training and development manager for Washington State's WIC program, can rattle off an impressive list of advantages of the combined clinic/classroom. For one thing, in addition to providing the optimum mix of instruction and hands-on experience, the center serves as a proving ground for training materials that are then shared with local agencies.

It's also a timesaver for local clinic supervisors, who can now delegate some of their training responsibilities. And it makes sure trainees, and through them, their clinics, have the latest information about changes in program operations.

In its first 6 months, WIC ETC has earned itself a good reputation. "Supervisors tell us their staff are returning to the clinics with new confidence,' says Connon. "And follow-up question-naires completed by class participants 2 months after the training indicate they felt it improved their job skills as well as their understanding of the WIC program.'

Future plans for WIC ETC are ambitious. "We want to use this facility to the maximum,' says Connon, "and to do that, we're developing training programs just as fast as we can identify the needs.'

Their ideas include: adding a basic orientation class for new clinic nutritionists, using videotapes to streamline instruction, and testing ways to use computers more extensively in local agencies. Also under consideration is using the center as the base for a circuit trainer who would periodically "take the classes on the road' to clinics in eastern Washington.

Photo: WIC certifier Maria Scott (far left) and dietitian Bill Schutte (far right) are two of the instructors at WIC ETC. Pictured with Schutte and in the center photos are some of the mothers and children the clinic serves.