University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Social Work 2021 Report

Learn more about each of our programs of study at

www.socialwork.illinois.edu

MESSAGE FROM DEAN ANDERSON Dear School of Social Work Friends, The last 18 months have been challenging for our School as we grappled with the Covid-19 pandemic. But like others, we have worked very hard to keep moving forward, and to couple our immediate priority of safely delivering on our mission during the crises with learning lessons that will make us stronger in the future. I am especially proud of how our faculty members nimbly and effectively transitioned their teaching online, how our students successfully adjusted to online learning and to rapidly changing field situations, and how our community partners and donors continued working hand in hand with us to deliver high quality education and community service. And in the midst of this, our researchers kept designing and executing the innovative research for which Illinois is known. All of this was done in an unassuming way in which everyone understood the need to come together and do their parts during an unprecedented time.

As we have re-opened our campus this fall and slowly resumed the in-person activities we have missed so much, we want to highlight accomplishments and happenings that have taken place in the last year. This report provides just a small sample of these many achievements. As you will see, we have enhanced our efforts related to racial justice in many ways, including through faculty hiring that has brought us important new expertise. You hopefully will enjoy the diverse selection of briefs that illustrate the rich array of impactful research in which our faculty members are engaged. We also highlight our new iBSW program to extend undergraduate program access, as well as our expanding workforce development efforts to prepare our students for innovative careers and to train state and nonprofit human service workers.

Thank you once again for all you have done and continue to do to make the School as impactful and innovative as it can be! It is this broad support and shared efforts by our entire School of Social Work community that make this such a special place.

Best Regards, Steve Anderson, Dean and Professor

iBSW PROGRAM LAUNCHING IN FALL 2022 A new stream of students will gain access to the field of social work, thanks to an iBSW program opening up next fall.

Community college graduates across the state of Illinois will have a new avenue for attaining their BSW beginning in the fall of 2022.

That’s when the School of Social Work launches its new hybrid iBSW program, which was created with the help of an Investment for Growth grant from the Provost’s Office to enhance BSW degree access. Dean Steve Anderson, who led development of the grant said, “The program will provide a seamless pathway for those just graduating from community college, while likewise offering easy access to those who earlier earned community college degrees and are working in their home communities.”

Originally intended to focus on the Chicago metro area, COVID-19 led to expanding those plans, says Carol Wilson Smith, BSW program director.

“After COVID, we realized we may need to make the program more accessible, so we’ve opened it up statewide,” she says.

The iBSW program will be delivered primarily online, with limited in-person classes and services to supplement online learning and offer opportunities for engagement and interaction.

“This is the same program that we offer on campus for our community college transfer students here,” Brenda Lindsey, teaching full professor says. “We’re just going to deliver it in a different way, in a hybrid and mainly asynchronous way.”

The new program will establish an easier route for community college students to enter the field, says Christine Escobar-Sawicki, clinical associate professor of field education. “We wanted to create more established corridors for students to go through our BSW program, graduate, and go into the job market, or go into our MSW program,” she says. “One way to do that was to reach out to our community college partners.”

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“Currently, there are not enough opportunities for students to get a BSW in the Chicago area,” Lindsey says.

Access to high quality social work education similarly has been a problem in underserved rural areas. “This will open up the gates for those who want to do so.”

“There’s always a demand for a University of Illinois degree,” Lindsey says. “And with Illinois Promise, scholarship money is available to meet some of the financial needs for students whose families meet certain income guidelines.”

The School hopes for a cohort of 20 to 25 students next fall, and is offering recruitment webinars every other Thursday to inform and advise prospective students about the iBSW. “This program gives us the opportunity to diversify our profession and meet workforce demands,” Lindsey says.

“We’re really excited about it.”

“We’re also trying to re-envision the systems we have in place in education, and to consider the structural changes that need to take place in order for these community college students to be successful,” says EscobarSawicki. “We are trying to be flexible and meet the needs of nontraditional students while maintaining the rigor of our land-grant institution.”

“This program gives us the opportunity to diversify our profession and meet workforce demands...”

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PARTNERING TO BENEFIT CHILDREN, FAMILIES The Department of Children and Family Services is partnering with the School of Social Work to develop extensive training programs through the Child Welfare Office of Workforce Development (OWD) A unique partnership that began in 2015 between the Department of Children and Family Services and the School of Social Work has blossomed into a much larger effort that promises to have an increasing impact on child welfare workers and families across the state.

The partnership spawned what is now known as the Child Welfare Workforce Development Project. Victor Lasko was hired in 2018 to direct the School’s Workforce Development Project, which employs more than 130 people.

“It’s a really good partnership between the School of Social Work and DCFS, which features the benefits the School provides with its research, its networks, and everything we have here,” Lasko says. “The School brings both structure and quality to this program, and an efficacy that we are proud to offer.”

For example, he says, the Children and Family Research Center (CFRC), a joint venture created in 1996 by the Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and the University of Illinois and housed within the School, has access to data that “are very useful to us as we are also the implementers of the training that results from that research.”

Lasko also points to the networking capacity with School of Social Work professors and the School’s Community Learning Lab as helpful. “We’ve utilized some of the professors, picked their brains and pulled some resources from them as we develop curriculum from some of the material that they’re teaching in their classes or have found in their research,” Lasko says.

Dean Steve Anderson, who also serves as principal investigator for the project, notes the synergistic relationship between the two organizations. “The state is in the middle of this complex and intensive task of serving very vulnerable children and families,” he says. “We have a close collaborative relationship with the Department. With our strong research presence in child welfare, we can use our research expertise to learn about issues and inform the training, and likewise the training can uncover issues that can benefit from our research capabilities.”

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OWD’s Training Reach The number of workers impacted by the partnership is large and growing. “This year we’re on target for 135,000plus training participants,” Lasko says, with the greatest numbers in pre-service.

That’s not 135,000 unique individuals, he adds. “For example, we had over 37,000 participants who completed the various trainings for caregivers last fiscal year. “That number reflects caregivers who are counted more than once because they completed multiple different trainings,” Lasko added.

The types of training provided through the project touch workers in many different roles. OWD provides preservice training for all DCFS caseworkers—the Department (DCFS) has about 2,700 itself—and its additional contracted private child welfare agencies’ foster care and intact caseworkers. “It’s a very large undertaking to make sure the pre-service training for caseworkers is embedded in good practice and current research, and provides a unified fidelity across the state for how we do child welfare practice,” he says.

Lasko notes that direct service worker specialties within DCFS and private agencies have a foundational course required as part of the process to be licensed with a Child Welfare Employee Licensure. “Through the School of Social Work, we offer the foundation training for permanency and intact caseworkers. In addition to providing pre-service trainings to these caseworkers, we also support the Department in facilitating the pre-service training for its staff who answer calls received at DCFS’s Child Abuse Hotline,” he says.

OWD also offers simulation trainings for child protection investigators in the Chicagoland region, and is working in partnership with DCFS on plans to add simulation training for intact family workers and permanency staff as well, Lasko says. “DCFS also partners with other universities who provide simulation training in their local regions,” he says. “Thus, OWD collaborates as well with those schools to ensure fidelity in investigator simulation training across the state.”

In addition, the office has a program called FISP (Field Implementation Support Program), which offers one-on-one coaching as well as classroom and group learning. This program focuses on coaching workers for enhanced practice, while also focusing on providing professional development for child welfare supervisors and leaders.

The Office of Workforce Development also facilitates a University Partnership program in collaboration with DCFS. “The state is facing critical child welfare staffing needs, perhaps exacerbated by the COVID pandemic,” Lasko says. “DCFS and private agencies are focused on increasing recruitment to get new people into their child welfare positions.”

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As part of an approach to address this need for staff recruitment, OWD collaborated with DCFS beginning in 2019 to extend its pre-service university training programs. This has led to a growth in the number of Illinois universities partnering in this training program from 6 to 23, with the OWD serving as the coordinator of the growing university collaboration. OWD staff recruit and support other educational institutions that either have begun or are working to begin offering this course. OWD staff also monitor each school’s offering for fidelity to DCFS’s pre-service training series.

OWD also facilitates an academic internship placement program as part of the DCFS project, in which OWD processes applications of students interested in seeking an internship directly with DCFS and works to place those students within DCFS child welfare teams or units throughout the state.

“We expect to see an influx of new employees coming in through these pipelines because of the work that UIUC project members are doing in partnering with these other universities,” Lasko says. He notes that 439 students applied for a DCFS academic internship in fiscal year 2021 (up from 239 the previous fiscal year), and 345 unique students enrolled in a University Partnership Course (up from 225 the previous fiscal year). “Sixty-six colleges and universities were represented by these 2021 academic intern applicants,” he adds.

OWD’s Growth Since Lasko assumed the director role in 2018, the Office of Workforce Development has undergone many changes. “The program and its deliverables have grown substantially,” Lasko says. “We have needed to become more structured in order to effectively respond to the state’s needs related to child welfare staff and caregiver training.”

Anderson notes the need to be nimble and responsive to new training needs in child welfare. “It’s a large undertaking,” he says. “We’re trying each year to get a little bit better, to continue to develop our relationships with the state, so that collectively we can do a better job of training workers. “This is a tough job and you develop an appreciation of it when you provide broad-based training. Our training staff work really hard, and they’re providing a critical service that ultimately affects how well workers are able to practice with abused and neglected kids and their families. And this makes all the obstacles and hurdles we work collaboratively with DCFS to negotiate worthwhile.”

Benefits for Social Work Students The dean says his hope over time is to tie the curricula developed and used by the OWD more directly into students’ education, including in innovative areas such as simulation training.

“We educate many future child welfare workers. So, the more we can learn from the training project and the more we can bring in people who work on the training projects to interact with our students and talk about real-world issues and what’s happening in the field, the better. It’s incumbent on us to figure out how to tap our training experiences in ways that enrich the education and the opportunities for our students.”

Improving Child Welfare Across the State This partnership that has resulted in the creation of the Office of Workforce Development, then, benefits DCFS, the School of Social Work, its students, and child welfare workers and other related workers and caregivers across the state.

“We’re a land grant university, and we have a powerful motive to serve the state,” Anderson says. “The idea of working with state agencies to improve their practice is what is at the heart of this initiative. We intend to help the state develop better child welfare practice, and this fits well with our educational mission.”

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SUPPORTING STUDENTS THROUGH THE PANDEMIC To address the educational and social-emotional challenges and learning loss experienced by freshmen, sophomore, and transfer students, the School of Social Work will be offering Social Works, an innovative program that will provide 1:1 and small group peer tutoring and mentoring, as well as skill-based workshops with faculty and staff.

Program goals:

Increase academic engagement and success by addressing learning loss experienced by undergraduate social work students due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Develop community connection to the School of Social Work and the campus by providing students with a supportive, accessible space.

Increase social-emotional supports, including education on stress management and coping skills and resource education and linkages to students to address mental health.

Social Works will offer up to 4 hours of weekly programming split up over two sessions. Both BSW and MSW students will be hired and trained to provide tutoring, mentoring, linkage to campus and community resources, and other programming.

The program, led by BSW Program Director Carol Wilson Smith and Director of Student Affairs Monica Cherry, was the recipient of a $20,000 Innovative Programs to Support Student Learning and Success award through the Office of the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs, and the Provost’s Office.

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NEW HRSA BEHAVIORAL HEALTH WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT GRANT AWARDED TO SCHOOL OF SOCIAL WORK FACULTY RESEARCH: WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT HRSA recently awarded $1.9 million to the School of Social Work The federal Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) recently awarded $1.9 million to the School of Social Work (Principal Investigator, Dr. Janet Liechty) over four years for continuation and expansion of the Illinois Behavioral Health Workforce Education, Learning & Leadership (BHWELL) Scholars Program. This continuation is funded under HRSA’s Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training for Professionals 2021 grant to address the mental health workforce shortage crisis in Illinois and across the US. Under the new grant, the BHWELL Scholars Program will provide 29 MSW and iMSW students each year for four years (116 total) the opportunity to receive specialized training and a stipend of $10,000 distributed across their 2-semester field placement.

To date, there are more than 85 BHWELL-approved SSW field sites located in HRSA-designated Health Provider Shortage Areas throughout Illinois, including rural, small urban, and urban underserved communities.

In addition, Dr. Liechty and team will work closely with the SSW recruitment team to strategically build a pathway to the profession by focusing outreach and recruitment efforts in several “grow zones” across Illinois that are HRSA-designated mental health shortage areas. These are high-need and high-demand areas with strong potential for building a robust pathway involving recruitment of students from new partners (community colleges, BSW programs, health/mental health care systems) into the MSW program and on to high quality MSW field placements, and finally to future employment in behavioral health.

This locally sensitive approach will provide opportunities for those living in high needs area to receive quality education and training opportunities while remaining in those areas, and thus contribute to alleviating the shortage of mental health care. This initiative will be achieved by collaborating with our existing rural partners such as Area Health Education Centers (AHEC), Rural Medical Education (RMED), and field instructors at current School of Social Work internship sites in western and central Illinois. The team is also seeking the help of our rural alumni to build an expert panel of clinicians who can help strengthen grow zones and pathways to the profession to address workforce needs.

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Under the School’s current HRSA grant, nearly 120 BHWELL scholars have been successfully trained, and this includes interprofessional education (IPE) with students from medicine, nursing, public health, and other health professions to learn team-based care and the integration of health and behavioral health services in healthcare and mental health settings. Since its 2017 inception, BHWELL has offered more than twenty IPE events and simulations for MSW students in conjunction with over 1,000 other health professions students. Topics explored poverty and health, discharge planning, farm disasters, disability awareness, trauma-informed care, COVID-19, and social determinants of health.

Under the new grant, BHWELL scholars will learn evidence-based practices to promote mental health and well-being across the lifespan with emphasis on children, adolescents and young adults at risk, including traumainformed care, violence prevention, and tele-health modalities. Under both grants, BHWELL scholars earn a Certificate in Integrated Behavioral Health.

Multi-site BHWELL Partners on the new grant include the National Center for Health Professions (NCRHP) and Illinois Area Health Education Centers (AHEC), and over a dozen collaborators within the School of Social Work are involved.

Dr. Liechty leads a comprehensive evaluation of the BHWELL program to advance understanding of professional self-efficacy and identity development of students during field, learning on interprofessional teams, social work roles and leadership, and professional resilience. Data include weekly Friday Feedback from students during their internships, focus groups, and repeated surveys at six time points that follow students two years after graduation.

Most BHWELL scholars (83%) are employed in health provider shortage areas after graduation and 92% report intent to get their LCSW. The BHWELL team is presenting findings at the upcoming Council on Social Work Education conference in Orlando in November 2021. In addition, an article entitled, “Enhancing MSW Field Education Using Rapid Cycle Quality Improvement: Feasibility and Acceptability of an Online Weekly Feedback Tool and Process” was recently accepted in the Journal of Teaching in Social Work.

Learn more at: socialwork.illinois.edu/community-partnerships/student-focused-partnerships/bhwell This 8-year project is supported by the Health Resources and Services administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) under grant #M01HP31357, Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training for Professionals, 3.8 million (2017-2025; Janet Liechty, PI); and 0% financed with nongovernmental sources. This information should not be construed as the official position or policy of, nor should any endorsements be inferred by HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government.

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FINDING THE PATH TO BETTER BEHAVIORAL HEALTH OUTCOMES The School of Social Work is leading a partnership to provide much-needed tools for behavioral health providers across the state.

The School of Social Work IM+CANS Training Office, which launched in 2018 to provide training and support for community behavioral health providers across the state of Illinois, initially received a rather chilly reception from some providers.

In part, that was because the training was mandated by the state. And it added one more item on an already overloaded to-do list for behavioral health providers.

Now, three years later, the reception has warmed considerably.

“We typically have 90 to 95 percent positive rates on our course evaluations,” says Matt Stinson, assistant director of Clinical Services for the Provider Assistance & Training Hub (PATH).

Providing Broad Support to Providers PATH evolved from the IM+CANS (Illinois Medicaid Comprehensive Assessment of Needs and Strengths) Training Office to reflect the expanding course offerings coming from the office. “As we began to be more involved in support, technical assistance, and training on new initiatives from HFS [the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services], we were no longer just an IM+CANS training office,” Stinson says. “The current name of our program is more reflective of the broader support and training for the additional behavioral health implementation efforts across the state. We’re working on all sorts of new service development, coaching support development, that extends well beyond training on the IM+CANS.” PATH is a partnership between HFS, the School of Social Work, and the University of Illinois Office of Medicaid Innovation, with curriculum development and training provided by a growing PATH team in the School of Social Work. Its mission is to train and support community providers in using tools such as the IM+CANS, along with other tools and services, to transform Illinois behavioral health service provision.

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“We serve HFS as they roll out new behavioral initiatives and new services,” says Judy Howard, assistant director of Training, Development and Operations for PATH. “They’re in the middle of an overall statewide behavioral health transformation, and our job is to educate and train the providers on the new services and also to provide ongoing support and coaching to help them as they implement the services. We also ensure that we are evaluating how well we’re doing.”

IM+CANS: A Lifespan Assessment Tool The IM+CANS is a comprehensive, lifespan tool for assessing the needs and strengths of people who require mental health treatment in Illinois. This unique tool was built for Illinois in consultation with national expert Dr. John Lyons and his team, and with input from state agency partners. The IM+CANS integrates assessment and treatment planning into a single process. It contains a complete set of core items that assess functioning across multiple life domains such as risk behaviors, trauma exposure, behavioral/emotional needs, substance use, and cultural factors, as well as a physical health risk assessment. CANS itself is used in 33 countries and all 50 states.

Surging Forward with Training PATH is providing training to large and growing numbers of Illinois service providers. “We’ve had about 15,000 people go through our courses,” says Stinson. “About 12,000 alone have been trained through IM+CANS.” IM+CANS, Howard says, is for anyone who might ever do a mental health assessment with a person covered by Medicaid: independent practitioners, LCSWs, psychologists, case managers, care coordinators, psychiatric nurses, and many others.

Howard says PATH has 31 courses in development, which has necessitated greatly growing the PATH team, which now numbers 29. Howard is in charge of the curriculum development unit and the learning management system; Stinson runs the clinical support side.

“Developing some of those natural clinical relationships, those professional relationships, Judy and I have tried to lead the way, but our team has been completely responsible for the successes,” Stinson says.

That clinical support, Howard adds, is vital, because “you train, you take the test, but some agencies find when they go forward to use it, they have questions about this section or that section. Matt’s team has really been able to get those teams over those hurdles.”

Achieving Better Outcomes A lot of hurdles have been cleared in creating a “baseline across the state,” Howard says. “IM+CANS is the tool that has helped everyone assess the same way, share the same language, and be able to understand the same treatment plans,” she explains. “That’s where we started, at ground level.

“Now we’re going into Phase Two, adding other new services that HFS is initiating as part of this transformation.

IM+CANS was just the first one.”

PATH’s quick evolution and swift development of tools and services comes at just the right time, Howard notes.

“Illinois’ behavioral health service network has been challenged for years,” she says. “The point of the Illinois Behavioral Health transformation project is to help address those challenges and make more services available in our communities.”

Stinson sees PATH as giving providers the practical solutions they need to serve people in the best way possible.

“Providers have been very thoughtful about how we remain compliant to policy while trying to do our best to serve the individuals who need help,” he says. “That’s not always an easy balance. So, we take new research and make it practical, and we help providers understand how to remain compliant and implement best practices without having to be fearful of having to close their doors. It’s a tedious balance, and sometimes those policy structures can seem confining.”

For Howard, it comes down to a very clear bottom line.

“We’re partnering with agencies to achieve better outcomes for individuals and families,” she says.

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ELEVATING VOICES: VISUALIZING SOCIAL JUSTICE THROUGH ART The works of eight artists, displayed throughout the School of Social Work building, promote and celebrate diversity and social justice.

It began last fall with a 24’ by 10’ mural created by MFA student Keenan Daley, entitled Year 401.

Daley’s art, which hangs just inside the entry to the School of Social Work building (see above), represents, in his words, “a real afro futurist perspective—the future of blackness.” Daley’s title reflects that 2019 marked the 400th anniversary of slavery.

Thanks to a John N. Chester Estate Endowment Award received through UI President Timothy Killeen’s Office, seven more works of art have been commissioned to adorn the School’s walls. The pieces will be installed in the building by the end of this fall semester, says Amy Frederick, assistant director of alumni & community engagement.

“Our ultimate goal is to host an unveiling of all the pieces together, with programming and discussion around each piece, when everyone feels a bit more comfortable to gather in large groups,” Frederick says.

The series of works, called Elevating Voices: Visualizing Social Justice Through Art, was conceived by Dean Steve Anderson. “The vision for the series was to recognize the need for, and facilitate discussions around, the complexities of racial and social justice, while elevating and empowering the voices of underrepresented populations and groups,” Frederick says.

Artists and Selected Pieces Keenan Dailey, MFA ’21. Vinyl wall mural. Year 401 Kang Sun, Social Work PhD candidate. Photography. Displacement Langston Allston, New Orleans-based painter and muralist. Acrylic on canvas. Warm Welcome Adam Farcus, Milwaukee-based artist. Neon. Pulse Cesar Ortiz, BFA student. Spray paint mural. El Apoyo Grey Sherwin, LAS ’21. Painting on wood. Apollo and Hyacinth Monica Rickert-Bolter, Chicago-based illustrator and graphic designer. Pastels. Waskonedoyen Kim Burnett, Milwaukee-based artist. Oil paintings. Treasure, Touch, Prayer, Home

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NEW FACULTY HIGHLIGHT DR. MAI HOANG Dr. Hoang’s research focuses on identifying the psychological factors that maintain racial biases and injustices impacting educational and clinical outcomes, as well as addressing systematic health disparities to increase access and service delivery for Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC).

While her work typically incorporates both quantitative and qualitative methods, Dr. Hoang is also interested in employing community-based participatory methods in her racial justice and health disparities research.

Influenced by her family coming to the US as refugees during the Vietnam War, Dr. Hoang became interested in economics, primarily in relation to the behaviors of people and communities. While working as an accountant, she also volunteered to teach financial skills classes for systems-involved youth.

In hopes of making more of an impact, Dr. Hoang left her job to pursue a PhD, earning her doctoral degree in 2020 from the Department of Educational Psychology at UIUC. After completing practicums and a year-long internship with the University of Illinois Counseling Center, Dr. Hoang began a postdoctoral research fellowship with the School of Social Work and has since been extending her expertise in racial bias and disparities to research on maternal and infant health with Dr. Karen Tabb Dina.

Although her current work focuses on health disparities, Dr. Hoang is also interested in examining the ways in which racial bias impacts information processing more generally. By examining the ways people’s personal experience and belief systems influence their response to information, Dr. Hoang hopes to increase the efficacy of diversity training. Because diversity training and cultural competency initiatives are deployed widely across professions, Dr. Hoang’s research has potential to address racial biases for those in critical, high-contact service positions- such as clinicians, educators, medical personnel, and police officers.

DR. MOSES OKUMU Dr. Okumu’s research focuses on the development, implementation, and evaluation of interventions in marginalized communities. He is particularly interested in examining the efficacy of digital and technology-based interventions for improving the sexual and mental health outcomes of vulnerable Black youth.

After earning his PhD degree at the Factor-Inwentash School of Social Work at the University of Toronto, Dr. Okumu began a postdoctoral fellowship position in the School of Social Work at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Originally from Uganda, much of Dr. Okumu’s research on the development and delivery of digital health interventions is centered there and in sub-Saharan African communities. Focusing on community-based strategies and strengths, Dr. Okumu’s work advocates for increasing the infrastructure of existing support systems and equipping community members with the resources necessary to provide services to local youth. Additionally, his research aims to inform the development of evidence-based programming, best practices, and policies related to interventions that promote the well-being of marginalized Black youth.

While his current research focuses on the prevention of gender-based violence among youth facing multiple forms of adversity in Uganda, Dr. Okumu is also interested in gender-transformative approaches and strength-based interventions related to men’s sexual and mental health. Experienced with using collaborative and community based participatory methods, Dr. Okumu is interested in working with communities to address local needs in ways that utilize and further strengthen existing networks.

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THE GEOGRAPHY OF OPPORTUNITY

FACULTY RESEARCH: CHILD WELFARE AND POVERTY William Schneider, recipient of a prestigious William T. Grant Scholars award, is studying the impact of geography on economic mobility.

“Recent research indicates that for low-income children the geography of where they are born has important implications for the likelihood of upward intergenerational economic mobility,” says Assistant Professor William Schneider. “That geography shapes opportunity and has important implications for prized ideals such as equality of opportunity.’”

Schneider is using three rigorous preexisting employment and housing experiments in Chicago to estimate causal effects on child neglect and child maltreatment overall, and by marital status and child age. “I’ll be studying how housing and income-support policies reduce or prevent child maltreatment, particularly child neglect, among families facing economic hardship,” Schneider says.

His work is being funded by a William T. Grant Scholars Program award. The $350,000 scholarship covers five years and supports the professional development of promising early-career researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. The program includes a mentoring aspect; Schneider will work closely with mentors Pamela Morris, professor of applied psychology at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development at New York University, and Lisa Gennetian, Pritzker Associate Professor of Early Learning Policy Studies in the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke University.

Schneider and his colleagues have published a series of recent papers that examine the developmental and family pathways that may shape, and be shaped by, the geography of opportunity.

“In one paper, we linked data on intergenerational mobility to administrative data on child maltreatment for 2,406 US counties and found that living in a high upward mobility county is associated with lower rates of child maltreatment, particularly neglect,” Schneider says.

In another paper, they found that a 1 standard deviation increase in county-level intergenerational mobility is associated with improved health for low-income children in terms of overweight/obesity, asthma, health insurance, well-child visits, bedtime, and hours of sleep.

“Together, this work indicates that one pathway by which neighborhood is linked to upward economic mobility for low-income children is through changes in parenting and health,” Schneider says.

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THE IMPACT OF COVID-19 ON PERINATAL DEPRESSION FACULTY RESEARCH: HEALTH

Karen Tabb is leading efforts to find new solutions to continue research engagement with patients during the pandemic.

COVID-19 has significantly impacted perinatal depression, says Karen Tabb, associate professor in the School of Social Work.

“From the patient perspective, for those who are in remission or who are not in the middle of an episode, it’s triggering,” she says. “You’re isolated. Your supports are gone. Services are remote. The incidents of new cases are higher, and it’s a trend we see globally.”

“Studies in Italy, Ireland, China, and Canada found that 44 percent of pregnant women are experiencing depression,” Tabb says. “And it’s usually 12 percent. For anxiety, it’s up over 70 percent.”

Tabb and her team are conducting a number of projects related to COVID-19 and improving maternal health outcomes through improving community health systems to address perinatal depression.

One such project, funded through PCORI (federal Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute), is looking at ways to increase stakeholder participation in patient-centered outcomes research, made much more difficult because of the pandemic. “This funding is part of a larger program that has helped us remain stable during the pandemic, and to think creatively about solutions to continuing to do research engagement,” Tabb says.

Tabb says creativity is needed in working with patients. “Different models of engagement are going to be essential moving forward,” she says. “At least for the next few years, we can’t have only Zoom or only in-person meetings. We have to think globally and think through the larger shared problem we’re facing and shared research solutions.”

Tabb’s advisory board, Perinatal Connect, includes patients with lived experiences, caregivers, providers, and researchers. “We’re a place where you can reach out to others to learn about opportunities to either be engaged in research, conduct research, or advise research studies,” she says. “And we’re also a place where people can spread community awareness.

“Our board is doing great things. They’re really shaping the health services research around perinatal depression.”

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LEADING THE SOCIAL INNOVATION CHARGE FACULTY RESEARCH: SOCIAL INNOVATION Ben Lough is heading campus-wide initiatives that are exploring solutions leading to greater social justice and equity.

In his role as Gies College of Business’s first director of social innovation, Professor Ben Lough leads Illinois Social Innovation, a campus-wide initiative that trains an inclusive network of changemakers to co-create innovative solutions for a more just and equitable society.

Illinois Social Innovation includes several entrepreneurship programs, including a Social Innovation Design Lab that is a collaboration between Illinois Social Innovation and the Siebel Center for Design. This design lab draws upon design learning and thinking to develop the next generation of social impact leaders.

Lough, who has been with the School of Social Work since 2011, has several recent publications that illustrate how these efforts are contributing to wide intellectual discussions about the value of social innovation and nonprofit training in higher education.

In one recent research review, Lough describes how decentralized efforts such as living labs, makerspaces, incubators, technology transfer offices, and cooperation accelerators can overcome many of the institutional bureaucracies and structures that inhibit social innovation in higher education.

“In pursuit of this aim, I am working with several decentralized units on campus to bridge academic-practice divides, enhance interdisciplinary collaborations, and facilitate experiential education,” Lough says. “A few examples include working with student social ventures to design entrepreneurial solutions to social and environmental problems, a social innovation design lab bridging faculty research with local voices together to tackle pervasive issues such as food insecurity, and coordinating hands-on learning opportunities for students to consult with local nonprofit organizations to develop community-based innovations.”

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EXAMINING POLICE INTERACTION AND MENTAL HEALTH AMONG URBAN BLACK SEXUAL MINORITY MEN (BSMM) FACULTY RESEARCH: SOCIAL JUSTICE Ryan Wade is co-leading a pilot project with Alida Bouris at the University of Chicago to help examine the mental health of BSMM who experience higher rates of police contact and violence.

A growing body of research has focused on the policing and criminalization of Black communities in urban centers of the United States. Studies indicate that people of color and sexual and gender minorities experience higher rates of police contact and violence than do their White, heterosexual peers; however, few studies have examined the ways in which police contact affect the mental health of young Black sexual minority men (BSMM). The team will conduct a mixed-methods study to address this critical gap in the literature, using both secondary and primary data from young BSMM (aged 18-35) living in Chicago, IL. “For the first phase of the project, we are using multilevel modeling to analyze three waves of data across a 12-month time frame among a sample of BSMM. We are examining whether higher levels of police contact are associated with higher levels depression/anxiety, and whether stronger perceptions of negative emotions (e.g., feeling dissatisfied, unsafe, fearful, and angry) about police interactions are associated with higher levels depression/anxiety,” Wade says. These findings will inform the development of an interview guide for the second phase of the project, in which the team will conduct semi-structured interviews with young BSMM. Wade explains that the interviews will add nuance and fill in gaps from the quantitative work, further elucidating BSMM’s experiences with police contact, legal socialization, and mental health needs. Study findings may inform the development of culturally-driven interventions that promote the health and wellbeing of BSMM, and have implications for policy and advocacy aimed at improving inner-city community relations with police.

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TARA LEYTHAM POWELL FACULTY RESEARCH: SW RESEARCH IN SCHOOL SETTINGS To address the growing needs of children and youth during the COVID-19 pandemic, Tara Powell, in collaboration with the international humanitarian organization, Save the Children, has developed virtual social emotional program, the Journey of Hope (JoH).

The COVID-19 pandemic is having a profound impact on children globally, jeopardizing their sense of safety, security, and mental health. Recent studies have indicated children and adolescents’ mental health problems including anxiety and depression have doubled during the pandemic. Pandemic related mental health needs are well documented, but there is a lack of accessible services to address the social emotional needs of young people.

To address the growing needs of children and youth during the pandemic, Powell, in collaboration with the international humanitarian organization, Save the Children, has developed a virtual social emotional program, the Journey of Hope (JoH).

“The goal of the adapted JoH is to provide accessible supportive programs that help children and youth learn healthy coping skills, process challenging emotions, and increase peer relationships.”

“During this time of immense uncertainty and disruption, it is critical for young people to have access to social emotional services to prevent the onset of more severe and sustained mental health challenges,” Powell says.

During the first phase of the project, Powell and colleagues piloted the program in the U.S. and Australia. The pilot study found that children who participated in the virtual JoH experienced increased self-esteem and reported that attending the group increased their ability to cope with difficult emotions. A second, larger scale study examining the long-term benefits of the program are underway. Building on preliminary findings, the study will examine the efficacy and implementation of the virtual Journey of Hope, in preventing behavioral health and interpersonal problems among pandemic-affected children.

The long-term goal of this project is to respond to the critical need for accessible behavioral health interventions designed to prevent and/or reduce COVID-19 related distress.

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ALLEVIATING SYMPTOMS OF DEPRESSION IN HEMODIALYSIS PATIENTS Rosalba Hernandez has received an R01 grant from the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases (NIDDK), a division of the National Institutes of Health, to develop and test virtual reality (VR) software to treat depressive symptoms in hemodialysis patients.

The project is titled “Virtual Reality: A New Technological Modality to Deliver Psychotherapy to Hemodialysis Patients with Comorbid Depression.” Hernandez plans to recruit adults undergoing hemodialysis treatment in Chicago and the Champaign-Urbana areas.

Hemodialysis (HD) is a taxing procedure with extensive illness burden and arduous self-care demands. As such, more than 30% of HD patients experience elevated symptoms of depression—and, research shows that comorbid depression is associated with adverse kidney disease outcomes, greater risk of hospitalization, and decreased survival rates. Current interventions to treat depressive symptoms in HD patients are resource intensive, infrequently administered, and often involve delivery of psychotherapy by highly-trained clinicians via multiple face-to-face communications. There remains a critical scientific gap for easily disseminatable and efficient strategies to improve emotional well-being profiles of HD patients in the U.S. and around the world. The objective of this R01 study is to design a VR platform that fully immerses users into a fictitious lifelike environment, to deliver an evidence-based positive psychological intervention and to test whether it improves the emotional well-being of HD patients with comorbid depression. For instance, during the module focused on mindfulness/meditation, Hernandez and her team will use a head-mounted display to fully immerse

and transport HD patients to an open field beside a calming stream where they will engage in a 12-minute guided meditation.

Hernandez hypothesizes that chairside delivery of psychotherapeutic treatment in HD patients using a VR environment will prove feasible and will result in significant improvements in depressive symptoms, quality of life, and dietary adherence, with lower evident rates for missed HD sessions and lower hospitalizations—all while serving as a more cost-effective and far-reaching platform that will greatly expand dissemination. Knowledge gained from completion of the proposed research will result in the first VR software application to deliver psychotherapy to HD patients, while simultaneously allowing them to leave the confines of the clinic and virtually travel to distant regions of the world.

Hernandez is also a part of The Kidney Wellness Institute of Illinois’ (KIWII), funded through the Discovery Partners Institute (DPI). The KIWII mission is to optimize the healthcare experience and quality of life of individuals with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), using primarily non-pharmacological prevention and treatment strategies such as exercise, dietary modifications, and other behavioral interventions. The KIWII team has officially launched a start-up company, Joviality™, focused on creating VR programming to improve health and wellness for patients with a variety of chronic health conditions, including Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD).

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EMPLOYEE RECOGNITION AWARDS The Employee Recognition Program honors employees for leadership in selected areas each year. Employees are nominated by their peers and selected by commitee.

The 2021 committee included Sandy Bruce, Brenda Lindsey, Kim Rice, Katie Shumway, Gaurav Sinha, Kevin Tan, Min Zhan (Chair), Rachelle Nickey (ex-officio)

Outstanding Staff Award: Cheryl Street The winner of the Outstanding Staff Award has served the School of Social Work for over 20 years. The nominator noted that “regardless of the specific position or tasks associated with any given role she has played, she has consistently achieved and demonstrated excellence. Her incredible knowledge, experience, history, and ever-expanding expertise is invaluable to the team of faculty and staff working to discern the most appropriate and viable course of action on behalf of students.” The support letter writers referred to her as “our encyclopedia, our search engine and heroine in the academic program suite.” In the challenging environment of this past year, her hard work, perseverance, dedication, and creativity have been critical in providing much-needed support and quality education to our students. It is undeniable that she exemplifies the staff member this award was meant to recognize and honor.”

Award for Excellence in Mentoring and Advising: Janet Carter-Black Professor Carter-Black was nominated by four graduate students, noting that their mentor “has a very clear and concise way of mentoring her students that truly helps them to understand how best to navigate the field of academia, social work, and more. She goes above and beyond what is expected of any mentor. She made it clear to us from day one that if we needed her assistance, she would be available to help us. She works with her mentees as a team, and she makes sure that her students feel valued with their thoughts and feelings embraced. She is quick to be kind, empathetic, and understanding of the situations her mentees face”. Through her supervision, the students felt that they are not only better prepared as educators and social workers, but they are better prepared to be mentors themselves in the future.

Award for Excellence in Teaching and Pedagogical Practice: Sandie Kopels The winner for the Award for Excellence in Teaching and Pedagogical Practice goes to a faculty member who “has had a huge and positive impact on student learning in our School. She is a master teacher and her reputation as such is known far and wide”. She has demonstrated sustained excellence in her teaching during the last 30 years. Each semester students are enthusiastic about her teaching. “Amazing” is the common word that students use to describe her teaching style and their learning from the course. Students commented that she “teaches from her heart”, and it is her knowledge, her caring, her humor, and her genuine interests in the students in and outside of the classroom that make her a “superior teacher”. She approaches her teaching in innovative ways and draws on each student’s unique interests. She has the ability to “lead the students to the threshold of their own mind”. She has shown “tremendous resilience in adopting her famous in-person class to online teaching” during the last year. Students constantly affirm how much they benefit from her teaching and how it prepares them for their profession as a social worker. Her teaching has had incredibly positive impact on our students, alumni, and faculty.

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Award for Excellence in Public Engagement: Liliane Windsor The winner of the Award for Excellence in Public Engagement is a faculty member who “is well known for her commitment to social justice, public engagement, and excellence” through her scholarly activities, teaching, and service. Throughout her work, the nominator wrote, “she has revealed a deeply rooted commitment to increasing social justice, engaging communities as partners, and disseminating her research not just in academia, but also in the communities that can use these findings to improve their conditions.” While she is “highly accomplished in academia, her agenda is not limited to the accumulation and production of knowledge. She embraces a hands-on, activist research agenda in which she strives to foster inclusion, combat injustice, engage the public, and create positive community change.”

She is a “gifted leader, an asset to our community.”

The Dean’s Prize in Innovation and Collaboration: Amy Frederick, Tony Hillen, Jeanette Long, and Becky Ponder The winning team for the Dean’s Prize in Innovation and Collaboration worked together creatively to expand webinars and virtual CEU events during the COVID-19 pandemic, “making them available to a broad audience who would have otherwise not been served”. The nominator noted that “since the pandemic lockdown began, the School has presented about 50 webinars and hosted 15 CEU events, reaching thousands of individuals.” The impressive collaborative work by the team “provided access to information and resources that might not have otherwise been available during the pandemic”, and “extends our educational reach”. Beyond that, the success of the innovative work of the team is far-reaching, and “has demonstrated that webinars and virtual CEU opportunities can and should continue in the long-term, serving the broad social service community”.

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A LIFETIME OF HELPING OTHERS Jim Dudley was always seeking ways to help others. Through the School of Social Work, he found that opportunity — and now he is helping others do the same.

Throughout his undergraduate experience at the University of Illinois, Jim Dudley (MSW ’66) kept trying to find opportunities to help people. He graduated in 1964 with a bachelor’s degree in education, “but I still didn’t know what I wanted to do with my life until someone suggested I inquire about an MSW degree in the School of Social Work,” Dudley says.

Going through the MSW program significantly changed his life. “I discovered a whole new world of not only helping all kinds of people, but also helping them overcome their environmental problems such as being oppressed by poverty, racial discrimination, or an inadequate education,” Dudley says. He wrote his master’s thesis on prenatal care for impoverished African American women. The thesis catalyzed the creation of a prenatal care center in an area of the local community that desperately needed it. From then forward, Dudley knew what he was meant to do in this world and dedicated his career to helping those that needed it most. Unsurprisingly, he continues that work to this day.

In the summer of 2021, Jim and his wife Joanna established the Jim and Joanna Dudley Scholarship at the School of Social Work. This scholarship provides support to deserving BSW and MSW students interested in social work at the macro practice level, addressing and overcoming such societal problems as poverty, discrimination, poor health, and hopelessness in our communities. Just as Jim’s life was significantly changed by the MSW program, the Dudley’s gift is helping to change and impact students’ lives—and all the lives that those students reach in return.

Interested in supporting students that are fighting for equity, promoting diversity, and working to end addiction, racism, and child abuse in our lifetime? Contact Nathan Goebel (ntgoebel@illinois.edu) to discuss your options and help create a lasting legacy of change for the better.

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1010 W. Nevada St. Urbana, IL 61801 MC-082 www.socialwork.illinois.edu #ILLINOISsocialwork (217) 333.2261 socialwork@illinois.edu