This is the fifth volume in a series of monographs from the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Service for Children and Their Families Program, which currently supports 41 comprehensive system of care sites to meet the needs of children with serious emotional disturbances (SED). This volume examines theories of adult learning, core values, and four key areas (cultural competence, family-professional relationships, systems thinking, and interprofessional education and training), and looks at promising practices that are combining these concepts into a successful sustainable training program. Individual chapters address: (1) changes in treatment and service systems that challenge traditional training approaches; (2) the essential elements and core competencies of practice in a system of care, including cross-cutting competencies; (3) processes and practices for effective preservice and inservice training; (4) North Carolina's Pitt-Edgecombe-Nash Public-Academic-Liaison (PEN-PAL) project that represents a comprehensive approach to training; (5) promising approaches to training in Santa Barbara (California), Vermont, Hawaii, and Houston (Texas); and (6) characteristics of traditional, modified, integrated, and unified partnerships between state agencies, institutions of higher learning, and families and communities. Appendices include lists of training competencies from different systems of care. (Contains 65 references.) (CR)