Center for Community Engagement and Collaboration

THE POWER OF ENGAGEMENT & COLLABORATION NEW CENTER FOCUSES ON HELPING COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS MEET THEIR GOALS Community engagement is in the University of Kansas School of Social Welfare’s blood. In fact, without community partners, the School would not be able to exist, says Melinda Lewis, LMSW, associate professor of the practice for the School.

Think about it, she says: Students complete their field practica at community organizations, gaining real-world experience while also helping the organizations fulfill their missions. Faculty members often stay engaged in practice and conduct research that directly benefits organizations in the community. Graduates go on to work for these organizations, bringing fresh energy and ideas.

Now, this mutually beneficial relationship is about to get a whole lot stronger. The School has an exciting new way to connect with and support community organizations: the Center for Community Engagement and Collaboration. Launched in 2019 under the direction of the associate dean for research, Amy Mendenhall, Ph.D, the center partners with community organizations to help them pursue their vision of social change, strengthen their operations, and transform their practice by providing services like agency capacity building, community evaluation, training and technical assistance, and professional development.

Our mission is to be what our community needs us to be. We need to be listening to people and adapting so we are able to help them equip themselves for an evolving world.� Melinda Lewis

“The Center is about having a different conduit through which to do community-engaged work, that deeper collaboration, in a way that is more systematic, more intentional, and more integrated throughout all the moving parts of the School,” explains Lewis, who is one of the Center’s associate directors.

The Center’s other associate director, Robin Nelson, oversees professional and continuing education, which is designed to provide relevant, timely, and accessible offerings that meet social workers’ needs and aligns with their aspirations. The team also includes students, who serve on an hourly basis, and faculty who lend their expertise on specific projects.

“We want to show community partners that it’s the whole School that is coming to partner with you,” Lewis says.

While the Center can work with organizations outside of Kansas, its primary focus is on Kansas community partners. “We’ll be intentional about building relationships with the communities where the School of Social Welfare is located, such as Lawrence, the Kansas City metropolitan area, western Kansas and southeast Kansas,” Lewis notes. “We are accountable to serve the students and organizations in those areas, without whom we would not be a School.”

Spotlight quote for page three: “Our mission is to be what our community needs us to be.

We need to be listening to people and adapting so we are able to help them equip themselves for an evolving world.” Melinda Lewis

COMMUNITY ENGAGED PARTNERSHIPS IN ACTION PHOENIX FAMILY

The staff at Phoenix Family could tell you story after story of people who have benefited from the support it provides for those who live in low-income housing communities. But the organizations that fund nonprofits like Phoenix Family don’t just want to hear personal stories, as powerful as they may be. They also want to see data that illustrate a program’s impact.

Now, thanks to their partnership with the KU Center for Community Engagement and Collaboration, this Kansas City nonprofit is well on its way to gathering and evaluating the kind of data that will help it tell its story to funders, and everyone else.

After meeting with the Phoenix Family staff to determine what it needed, the Center got to work on its two most pressing goals:

Train the staff to build out a “theory of change,” which explains their work, and design and implement evaluations that show the impact of its programs and services.

The collaboration has helped this nonprofit develop its capacity to raise funds, and it has deepened the long partnership between the School of Social Welfare and Phoenix Family, a practicum site for the School’s students.

CHILDREN’S TRUST FUND: MISSOURI’S FOUNDATION FOR CHILD ABUSE PREVENTION

The Children’s Trust Fund in Missouri has a big vision. They want a world where children are free from child abuse and neglect. To do so, it distributes grants to organizations tasked with strengthening families and preventing child abuse.

Through a new three-year partnership with the KU Center for Community Outreach and Collaboration, the Children’s Trust Fund will now be able to help develop the capacity of a few of its funded partners while also evaluating how well their investments in their strategic planning, collective impact, and fund development are positioning them to succeed in preventing child maltreatment.

The Center brings the expertise of two faculty members to support the Children’s Trust Fund and its partners with services like coaching, evaluation, and consultation. Jared Barton, Ph.D., associate researcher professor, will conduct evaluations of the programs’ outcomes, with Center Associate Director Melinda Lewis, LMSW, contributing her expertise in agency capacitybuilding.

This collaboration is a win-win for the Children’s Trust Fund and the School because it allows the trust fund to tap into the expertise of faculty members who are leaders in the field, gives faculty the opportunity to enrich their knowledge through this real-world application of their skills, and builds relationships between the School and organizations dedicated to providing a strong start in life for Missouri’s children.

Center for Community Engagement & Collaboration ccec@ku.edu Amy Mendenhall, Director Melinda Lewis, Associate Director Robin Nelson, Associate Director

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For more information, please visit socwel

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SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WELFARE University of Kansas 1545 Lilac Lane Lawrence, KS 66045-3129 Phone: (785) 864-4720 Fax: (785) 864-5277 socwel.ku.edu

2020 CCEC

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