University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Social Work Report 2022

SOCIAL WORK ANNUAL REPORT 2022

MESSAGE FROM DEAN ANDERSON

Dear School of Social Work Friends,

This past year has been especially gratifying and exciting as we have transitioned back to in-person classes, work, and activities following the difficult challenges of the pandemic. The pandemic continued to affect many of us, and our community has been thoughtful and compassionate in providing help to others. At the same time, being able to re-engage in our many functions in a more normal fashion has provided a sense of re-invigoration in the School. In addition, we have learned lessons from the pandemic that will make us an even stronger School.

In the midst of these many challenges, our entire social work community kept providing the high level of innovation and quality work for which Illinois is known across research, teaching, and community engagement. This report highlights just a small sample of these many achievements. I especially want to note the School’s work to establish its new iBSW program for community college graduates, as well as moving our well-known iMSW hybrid program totally online in Fall 2023. Our focus on racial justice continued, and featured our faculty members again leading the way in the receipt of research projects through the University’s Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice.

I hope you will enjoy this selection of brief stories that illustrate the diverse and highly impactful work being done on so many fronts by our faculty and staff members, students, alums, and community partners. 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

NEW YEAR, NEW INITIATIVES

The School of Social Work constantly assesses where and how to make adjustments to its educational programs and how they are delivered, based on the needs of its students. The ongoing goal is to develop programs that are as accessible as possible to the diverse student audiences the School serves. Two new online initiatives are the latest examples of the School’s efforts to extend program delivery options to better serve evolving student needs.

A new academic year offers fresh starts, new opportunities, and—in the case of the School of Social Work— new initiatives.

This fall, two initiatives—fully online programs for the BSW and MSW degrees—are entering different stages of development in the School.

Introducing the Newest Program: The iBSW

The iBSW is a two-year program designed for community college graduates and transfer students with junior standing to earn their Bachelor of Social Work through a combination of online courses and local field placements.

“We’re excited to start this program,” says Dean Steve Anderson. Originally developed with a Chicago metropolitan area focus, the program idea soon expanded statewide, as community colleges from across the state spoke to its need.

“Our first cohort of ten comes from all around the state,” Anderson says. “Our intent is to build to around thirty students for each cohort.”

The initial plan is to focus on Illinois, to strengthen connections with the state’s community colleges and contribute to social work workforce development needs in Illinois, though the program is open to students beyond Illinois, Anderson says.

“All the classes are synchronous,” he notes. “Students will be meeting fellow students in Zoom rooms. The upside of this type of delivery is the collaborative and connections part. The downside is some people are busy and want to sit down at their desk to complete their courses whenever they want. There are certainly pros and cons, but we’ve decided on the Zoom in-person type of model to maximize interactions between students and faculty members.”

The School’s field placement team will find internships for students in their local communities or nearby settings consistent with their employment goals. This is another area in which Covid-related remote experiences have led to new innovations, Anderson says. “Before the pandemic, all of our site visits were done in person,” he explains. “Now, we do a lot of that work through Zoom. It helps us get into the nooks and crannies of the state without having to travel so much and consume large amounts of staff time and energy.”

The School plans to host optional gatherings for students to help them feel more a part of the university and the School and to build deeper connections with their fellow students, Anderson says.

iMSW Program to Go Completely Online

The iMSW program, a part-time program that allows working professionals to complete their MSW degrees away from campus, traditionally has been a hybrid program requiring limited weekend in-person involvement. However, the Leadership and Social Change MSW specialization moved to a totally online format in 2018. Now, the larger Advanced Clinical component of the program is scheduled to move totally online beginning in Fall 2023.

These fully online program options will complement the School’s traditional in-person MSW and BSW programs, and will make it easier for students to obtain their MSW on a part-time basis while remaining employed. The online courses in each concentration will have weekly Zoom sessions during the evening, again with the intent of providing good interactions among students and with faculty members.

“Our iMSW program has really grown,” Anderson says. “It’s now substantially larger than our MSW campus program. It’s evolved that way because that’s what students demanded, especially those returning students who often juggle demanding work and family schedules.”

High Quality Online Capabilities

The question isn’t just whether you can move an educational program online, but whether you can maintain the same high quality as with in-person education. “I think on the MSW side, we have made great strides and are reasonably close in terms of the quality that we deliver,” Anderson says. “Providing a product that is just as good as if students were coming here in person is the goal we are striving for.”

To that end, the School has hired an online coordinator to make sure that courses and programs maintain a smooth consistency and the same high-quality standards as in-person courses and programs. Helping in that area is that faculty members—thanks in part to experience they gained with online learning during the pandemic—are becoming increasingly skilled and creative in teaching online.

“What concerns me more with online learning is building in the student support system to respond to students wellbeing and to provide other types of interactions and benefits that we do on the campus to help students identify with being part of the School and of the University of Illinois,” Anderson says. “It’s making sure that the things you could take advantage of on campus—like the libraries—aren’t any trickier to get if you’re not here.” The School is looking to provide services in roughly the same time frame as it does on campus, Anderson says. And, as with the iBSW, it will offer optional opportunities for campus gatherings for its iMSW students.

Online Expands Access and Fills Needs

Offering courses and programs online creates challenges that aren’t always easy to solve. But the effort is well worth it, Anderson says.

“What’s most fundamental about it to me is expanding our access,” he says. “Social work is a field in high demand, and the need is spread out in disadvantaged communities. So, the most important aspect for us in having online programs is creating that educational access and getting out there to people in those disadvantaged communities who might not be able to come here otherwise. We hope that leads to greater diversity in the student body as well, and in turn greater diversity of the service providers in those communities.”

The need to go online is even more profound now, considering the social service workforce shortages the state faces, Anderson says.

“It’s a good thing to do and we have the capability to do it,” he says. “And there are competitive pressures to do it as well. People got used to engaging in online education during the pandemic, and now many more are looking for programs online. I think that demand, that pressure, is only going to increase. There’s no going backwards on that. We have to be innovative and learn how to deliver the highest quality online programs to complement what we do in person.”

POSITIVE IMPACTS OF THE PANDEMIC

The School of Social Work has weathered the pandemic—and come out stronger for it.

The pandemic has had many negative impacts on essentially everyone and every entity, including higher education. But as the School of Social Work and its many partners worked through this very difficult time, many lessons were learned that should make the School stronger moving forward. Following are six ways in which the School has turned the challenges of the pandemic into something good.

1. Improving the delivery of online content, courses, and programs.

“We had to transform the whole education process pretty much overnight,” says Dean Steve Anderson. “Faculty did the best they could to start teaching online, our technical staff had to get set up so this could happen, and students had to change how they learned. But it was refreshing that everybody did this with minimal complaints. “Since that first year, we’ve been applying some of the lessons we learned on remote teaching.”

It was tough going at first, as instructors were forced to switch how they taught mid-semester. “But once they saw what Zoom could do in an interactive format, they liked it, or at least saw it as a good option,” Anderson says.

2. Providing greater educational access by increasing the offering of online courses and programs. “Our School’s mission is heavily access-driven,” Anderson notes. “Now, we have better capability to deliver content online, and we have to do it. We were already moving in that direction, with more MSW students taking our hybrid MSW program, and now that will be accelerated.”

Returning professionals, Anderson says, are a significant portion of the School’s students, and their ability to come to campus is hampered by work and family responsibilities. “It’s just not feasible or desirable for many students,” he says. “The market is demanding that we make our programs more accessible. That’s not going to change. The positive here is I think we’re now better prepared to move to more online education.”

3. Building a stronger community as faculty, staff, and students all were called on to pitch in to make the necessary changes to teaching, learning, and communicating. “The resilience and the spirit people have shown is great,” Anderson says. “People have just hunkered down knowing this is an unusual situation, and everyone has pitched in.”

Agencies worked with the School and the students to set up remote field placements, and the School hired an online coordinator to help smooth the transition to remote learning.

At the same time, Anderson acknowledges that the pandemic has taken a toll on everyone—faculty, staff, and particularly students.

“We have had more mental health issues on the student side than normal,” he says. “They’ve been undergoing financial and other family stresses.” He notes that the School received funds specific to the pandemic from the university, and Director of Advancement Nathan Goebel worked with the Office of Student Affairs to raise money to help with student financial issues. “The money he raised included money from our faculty members and many other donors,” Anderson adds.

The dean knows students will feel a sense of loss as they look back on this time, because they weren’t expecting to be derailed by a pandemic. “We couldn’t deliver what we normally deliver,” he says. “But we figured out a way to keep going forward. At the end, people just hung together really well.”

4. Developing new research projects related to the pandemic.

Faculty had much of their research disrupted, particularly in the earlier stages of the pandemic, as no in-person interviews and meetings could take place. “Funding agencies were understanding of that,” Anderson says. “Most of our researchers have a diversified portfolio and could shift to data they previously had collected or an article they wanted to write. And then, as we got better with remote technology, we moved some of our interviewing into that format. Slowly, faculty have been able to reengage at some level with people.”

The pandemic also resulted in new calls for research, especially with respect to needed services and disparities in how the pandemic affected different groups. “As a School, we do a lot of health disparities work, and agencies were particularly interested in how the pandemic had disproportionately affected some groups,” Anderson says. “So, that has created some opportunities for faculty that are ongoing now.”

5. Creating a Community Engagement Advisory Board that includes community social workers and formalizes the old alumni board.

“Dean Anderson had the desire to grow our alumni board in not only the number of members, but the type of members serving as well,” says Amy Frederick, assistant director of Alumni & Community Engagement. Being an alumnus of the School is no longer required. The School changed the board’s name and invited community social workers from across Illinois to serve, and that influx has expanded the board from 10-12 members to 17. The board also has a less-rigid voting system and bylaws.

“We now meet once a semester, including summer, to allow for everyone’s busy schedules,” Frederick says. “And we have established three subcommittees: racial justice, mentoring, and therapeutic case studies. Each has a faculty or staff liaison to assist in setting and achieving board goals.” So far, Frederick says, the re-envisioned version of the board “has proven to align effectively with the type of culture that has arisen since the pandemic first began.”

6. Increasing continuing education opportunities for licensed social workers and professional counselors by shifting from in-person events to webinars.

Before the pandemic, Frederick planned and executed continuing education events for social workers and counselors. “We would have two large CEU events, one in fall and one in spring, where we would expect over 100 attendees,” she says. “Then, we would scatter in a handful of smaller CEU events with about 35-50 expected in attendance. Prior to the pandemic, I never would have considered offering a webinar.”

Shortly after the pandemic upended how education could be safely delivered, the School shifted to using Zoom Webinar, which has an attendance capacity of 1,000.

“Our first webinar, held in April of 2020, had 850 attendees from all over the world,” Frederick says. “We now offer the majority of our continuing education events virtually.” Since April of 2020, the School has held over 50 such events, with attendance always being significantly higher than the traditional in-person events. “We plan to offer up to 10 in-person events each academic year, while the majority will continue to be held over Zoom,” she says.

No Going Back

The pandemic and the lessons learned from it have altered how the School thinks about and delivers education. Pandemic experiences have changed how students can access education in many ways. This has opened up opportunities for more students to take courses and earn degrees, and demanded new research in areas critical to social work practice. The growth in our use of technology has extended the reach of the School, as it provides for continuing education for social workers and counselors in distant places with busy schedules.

And overall, it has brought out the best in the School’s people during a time of crisis —its faculty, staff, students, and many community partners. Everyone has pulled together.

“I just don’t see us going back to where we were before,” Anderson says when asked about the continuing push to remote education. “I certainly hope the pandemic goes away but we cannot forget it, and we need to try to anticipate future disruptions. We need to take advantage of the lessons we learned and be mindful that something like this could happen again. We weren’t ill-prepared compared to others, but like society as a whole, we can’t get too comfortable.”

FINDING THE PATH TO SUCCESS

The Provider Assistance and Training Hub (PATH) has been working for years to develop curriculum, training, and coaching for an initiative called Pathways to Success.

The Provider Assistance and Training Hub (PATH) is in the midst of providing training for an array of new services aimed at meeting the behavioral health needs of children and families across the state of Illinois.

Those trainings are a result of an initiative of the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services (HFS) called “Pathways to Success.”

“This has been some time in the making,” says Matt Stinson, assistant director of Clinical Services for PATH. “Part of our expansion over the last couple of years has been in preparation for supporting the new services that will be launched under the umbrella of Pathways to Success.”

PATH provides coaching and training to Medicaid behavioral health providers across the state of Illinois. Originally launched in 2018 as the IM+CANS (Illinois Medicaid Comprehensive Assessment of Needs and Strengths) Training Office, PATH is a partnership between HFS, the School of Social Work, and the Office of Medicaid Innovation (OMI).

Trainings to Begin in October

In October, PATH will launch trainings and support for intensive home-based treatment, family and peer support, therapeutic mentoring, high-fidelity wraparound services, and intensive care coordination services.

“High-fidelity wraparound and intensive coordination will be the primary vehicle for which at-risk youth and families will come together and develop child and family teams that will consist of the other services mentioned,” says Stinson. “We’re right on the cusp of launching training and support for all of these new services, so it’s an exciting time, and a little anxiety-producing as well,” he laughs. “But part of our expansion for my team has been adding trainers and specialists to support those initiatives. So, we’re prepared to help support HFS and the field launch all these services related to Pathways to Success.”

The majority of the trainings are two-day, live-facilitated sessions through Zoom or self-paced, Stinson says. “That’s a product of the pandemic, not out of desire,” he adds. “We hope in time to move to a hybrid offering where we are in person doing some live trainings.”

Judy Howard, assistant director of Training, Development, and Operations, is overseeing the development of selfpaced booster courses that will supplement the launch of Pathway to Success’s core courses, Stinson notes. “There are expectations that providers that are utilizing these new services engage in ongoing training and coaching as well,” Stinson says. “And we’ll also be building intermediate and advanced courses that will launch further down the initiative.”

Staff Expansion

The expansion of PATH’s staff extends as well to the training, development, and operations side.

“We expanded our instructional design team this year to help meet the demand for all of this course development,” says Howard. “We’re in the process of hiring a clinical quality review coordinator and two other staff to evaluate the quality of work that’s being done and provide some coaching and support for trying to improve the level of practice for all of these new services and initiatives.”

Overall, PATH now has 47 positions (some not yet filled), an increase of about 12 from a year ago.

“Our growth continues to be pretty rapid,” Stinson says. “We have an amazing staff with incredible clinical expertise and depth and then on the workforce team, their ability to put together very thoughtful, consumable products is really remarkable.”

Great Interest in New Services

That growth is necessary because of Pathways to Success and the interest in the new services the initiative is providing.

“Intensive home-based treatment is garnering a lot of interest,” Stinson explains. “It’s the most clinically complex Medicaid service that will be offered to youth and families. It’s also the most training-intensive service that we’re going to launch. There are a lot of eyes and ears on intensive-home based service because of the clinical interest and also the time investment folks are going to have to put in to become intensive home-based providers. In my opinion, intensive home-based is our most challenging service to launch, so we’re having ongoing conversations about how we best support the field to make that service a success.”

Ready for Launch

Howard and Stinson have contributed to the field beyond their immediate duties with PATH. Howard served as this year’s chair of the 18th Annual TCOM (Transformational Collaborative Outcomes Management) Conference, and Stinson served on a statewide committee for IM+CANS that has worked on potential changes to the IM+CANS program.

“Those are two other things we’ve been juggling with all the other things that have been going on,” says Stinson. But the biggest push and focus for PATH is preparing for the imminent launch of the Pathways to Success services. “We started our work toward the launch of this statewide new service package in July of 2018,” Howard says. “It’s really exciting to be this close to it finally launching. It’s the culmination of all of our work for the past four years.”

A PARTNERSHIP TO IMPROVE OUTCOMES FOR FAMILIES AND CHILDREN

CPRD and MIECHV have enjoyed a long-standing partnership—and children and families across the state are benefiting.

A long-term relationship between the Center for Prevention & Research Development and the Illinois MIECHV (Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting) program is positively impacting children and families across the state of Illinois.

“CPRD has been working as the research and evaluation partner with MIECHV for more than ten years now,” says Nancy Flowers, director of research programs for CPRD. Recent work, she says, includes a home visiting needs assessment, a study on salaries of home visitors, and a health equity analysis.

“The great thing is, the Illinois Department of Human Services, which administers the MIECHV program in the state, is using these data and findings to make funding decisions, ensuring that the communities that they fund have the greatest need for home visiting services,” Flowers says.

Home Visiting Needs Assessment

In 2019 and 2020, the MIECHV team conducted a statewide needs assessment to collect data and information about community needs, risk factors, and the capacity of communities to deliver home visiting services. “The findings will help us ensure that MIECHV programs are being operated in counties and communities that have the greatest needs for home visiting services and that they have the capacity to implement these programs,” Flowers says.

The data was collected from 26 agencies implementing MIECHV programs across 13 counties and included 1,939 children.

“Last year, MIECHV home visitors conducted over fifteen thousand home visits, reaching about twelve hundred families across the state,” Flowers says.

The study found that 52 of the 102 Illinois counties were at risk in terms of home visit needs, based on the prevalence of risk factors in the county. That data is being used in funding decisions by the Department of Human Services.

“For us, as researchers, we’re thrilled to see that data like this is being used in such an impactful way,” Flowers says. “Part of our mission as a center is to support data-based decision-making, and this is a great example of utilizing data to strengthen what’s happening in the field so they can make good, informed decisions about who to fund for home visiting. The assessment process is an arduous one, so it’s really satisfying to see that kind of outcome.”

Building up the Home Visit Workforce

The number of home visit slots has essentially doubled since 2010, to 20,000 slots. So, the workforce is being raised up, but the need for more staff remains.

“There’s definitely room to serve a lot more families; the need is definitely out there,” says Mary Anne Wilson, MIECHV program specialist. “Part of that increase has been capacity building, hiring and training the workforce, building the stable programs and slowly growing them. It takes time for that workforce to stabilize.”

Children and families clearly benefit from that workforce buildup and stabilization. “There’s evidence that demonstrates that families who are involved in home visiting are having improved outcomes,” Flowers says. “Kids are more ready to go to kindergarten. Parenting practices are higher. Screenings are getting done. Families are healthier. They are getting wraparound services because the home visitor will work with them to refer them to other services. These types of outcomes are driving the support for increasing slots for home visiting.”

Salaries of Home Visitors

Another CPRD study shows that the main reason for the high turnover in home visitor programs is salaries and benefits, Wilson says. “In our last survey, forty percent of our supervisors said pay was the reason staff said they were leaving,” she notes. The impact of staff turnover on families served is significant, Wilson adds. “The way home visits work, there’s this really strong bond that develops with the families, a lot of sharing that goes on. A lot of times, families don’t want to start over with a new home visitor. So, there’s a disruption in services when there’s that turnover.”

Jackie Farber, a research program specialist for CPRD, says the data collected is being used to make the case for higher salaries. “You want to keep people long term, because you can’t really have an effective program up and running when people are continuously leaving,” she says. “We’ve been asking this question about salary for years. In order to put it in context, we do various analyses with the salaries to educate people on what those salaries mean in practical terms.”

And, Flowers adds, “Our data is part of telling that story.” The Department of Human Services inserted salary requirements into the RFPs (Request for Proposals) for home providers this year to help clarify the funding picture for the next fiscal year.

“They’re trying to raise the overall salary for home visitors in the field. So that’s a great success,” Flowers says. “It’ll take some time, but it’s a great first step to have that message come from a funder’s perspective, saying we want to raise this workforce up, and we’re asking you to pay home visitors at a higher level.”

Health Equity Analyses

CPRD has also been conducting health equity analyses for MIECHV, looking at child outcomes by ethnicity, gender, race, primary language, income level, and urban vs. rural setting to identify disparities. The outcomes of interest were:

• Well child visits

• Safe sleep

• Early language and literacy

• Developmental screenings

“What we found was that children of Black backgrounds were disproportionately less likely to meet welfare child visits and safe sleep,” says Viviana Deltas, a senior research program coordinator for CPRD. “And children living in rural areas were disproportionately less likely than those in urban areas to meet safe sleep and early language learning. We also found that boys were less likely to have developmental screenings, and that children in Englishspeaking families were less likely to have other developmental screenings done.”

CPRD shared this data with relevant agencies across the state and gained their input on the data. “The impact of these analyses is that the agencies got in their minds that this is an important topic that they have to consider all the time, that they need to incorporate this equity lens into the CQI (Continuous Quality Improvement) processes that they are doing,” Deltas says. She adds that the data is preliminary and that CPRD plans to repeat these analyses every two years and share it with funders.

“The field and funders are making equal access a priority,” Flowers says. “They’re looking at ensuring that there’s equal access to services and healthcare for families, and they’re paying attention to ensure that outcomes are equally successful among different groups of people. That hasn’t always been a focus, but it’s definitely a focus now.”

A Strong and Unique Partnership

“A lot of times data partners like us are sort of off to the side on projects—we’re doing data collection and analyzing data,” Flowers says. “But MIECHV is unique in that we’re fully integrated with the project, we have the benefit of strong communication with our funder, and we’re actively participating with the field.

“With that type of environment, MIECHV has really strengthened our evaluation work and facilitated our ability to increase the impact that data can have on a project because we’re participating, we’re at the table on those conversations. I’ve been on a lot of projects over the years, and it’s not always that way. So, it’s really nice that it is so integrated on projects like these.”

ALONG FOR MORE THAN THE RIDE

Becky Rowe (MSW ’21) has an unusual career for a social worker. She works as a crisis counselor for a police department. The pairing of social workers with police officers is part of a program called REACH, which was developed at the University of Illinois by several UIPD employees who also earned their MSWs from the School of Social Work.

As part of the UIPD’s REACH program (Response, Evaluation and Crisis Help), Rowe spends the majority of her 10-hour shifts riding along with Behavioral Health Detective Officer Alex Tran and his K9 therapy dog, Lollipop, responding to mental health emergency calls. (The department has more than 40 officers trained as crisis intervention officers; of those, four are primary behavioral health detectives along with four backup behavioral health officers who assist when other behavioral health detectives are off duty.)

In addition to initially responding to mental health crises in the community, REACH staff follows up within the first few days of the crisis to make sure that those who need it have access to long-term care. REACH staff do not provide that long-term care themselves, but they have established relationships with campus and community resources that do.

“Our primary focus as crisis workers is in suicide prevention and hospital deferral when clinically appropriate,” says Rowe. “We bring evidence-based tools directly to the client, in the field.”

Pairing Officers With Social Workers

At the direction of Chief Alice Cary, REACH was started in 2021 by Lt. Aaron Landers, MSW, who almost immediately hired Megan Cambron, LCSW, and another MSW graduate from the University of Illinois to direct the mental health portion of the program. After Lt. Landers unexpectedly passed away in August 2021, the team doubled their efforts to carry on his vision. Cambron oversees the program. REACH currently has three social workers with MSWs on staff: Megan Cambron, LCSW, Rowe, and Amanda Goodwin.

The crisis counselors are paired with officers who have a special interest in crisis response, as well as additional training in the area of mental health. “Officers have been de facto mental health providers for years, which is a lot to expect of them,” says Rowe. “It’s great to be able to offer a respite to our police officers in responding to mental health crises.

The Crisis Counselor’s Responsibilities

When a dispatcher determines that there is a mental health component to a 911 call, he or she dispatches a Behavioral Health Detective (BHD) unit, which often includes a social worker. Once the officer assesses that the scene is safe and secure, the social worker takes the lead in talking with the person in crisis. The social worker clinically assesses the situation and consults with the person in crisis regarding the next steps.

“That could include providing immediate supportive therapy and listening support, creating a safety plan, or connecting people with helpful resources,” Rowe says.

The social worker might also obtain consent to communicate with other university departments and community agencies to provide additional assistance. At times, a call will result in the BHD unit transporting the person to a safe location, and it will always be followed up with additional contact to ensure that the person is getting the help they need.

“I particularly like to be there with a person in acute need,” Rowe says. “In most cases, I can build rapport in an authentic way. You don’t always get the ‘feel goods’ in social work, but when you’re giving someone a different perspective, helping them see a different path, and they start to get it, that’s a teaching component that is very gratifying.”

Need for More Social Workers

The UIPD received 175 crisis intervention calls from August 21, 2021, to March 22, 2022. “Our REACH team responded to fifty-two of those calls,” Rowe says, “which means the rest of the time, we didn’t have a social worker on duty. Our police officers responded, but not a REACH unit.”

That data, in addition to an expanded UIPD footprint on campus beginning in October, means “we probably need another social worker on duty, at night, because that’s when the majority of the mental health crisis calls come in,” she says.

In addition to responding to crises calls, the BHD units make their presence known on campus. “A lot of what we do is community-based,” Rowe explains. “When we’re out walking on campus, we’re walking with the dogs, and we’ll hear a student call out from across the quad, ‘Hey, Lollipop!’ It’s all about human connection.”

Great Support from the School of Social Work

Rowe says her MSW has helped her in many ways, including a vital function: documenting data to illuminate the need for greater funding to provide for additional social workers on the force. “Statistics gave me hives in school,” she laughs, “but it is helping me quantify the data that will help us continue to provide this really important service to people.”

Her experience with the School of Social Work, Rowe adds, was wonderful. “The professors were amazingly supportive. I can’t thank them enough for their support and encouragement,” she says.

She would be remiss, she says, if she “didn’t give a shout-out to BHWELL,” which is a clinical certificate and scholarship program for MSW students to learn team-based models for integrating health and mental health services in primary care settings in rural and under served areas.

“BHWELL helped me to narrow my focus to mental health and healthcare,” Rowe says. “In my role today, I am using both areas of study.”

An MSW: So Many Options

Rowe didn’t go back for her MSW until she was 50 years old. And she’s thrilled she did.

“If you’re thinking about enrolling in the program but have reservations, do what I did,” she says. “Take a class as a non-degree-seeking student and get some exposure to the program. Reach out to professors. This is an excellent school with people who are invested in your success!”

And that success, she adds, can have many looks.

“I wanted to have options in life,” Rowe says. “And that’s exactly what my MSW gave me. An MSW is so expansive! There’s so much you can do with it. It’s as much as you want to make of it. It really is.”

THE ROAD LESS TRAVELED

Ian Hulette’s road has never been easy. But now, as he looks back on how he got to where he is—less than a year from earning his MSW—he sees meaning in it, and a purpose that he is on his way to fulfilling.

Ian Hulette is likely one of the very few previously incarcerated individuals who has turned down early release for good behavior. “I was sentenced for six years to do three, and I was going to do all three because I wanted it to help shape me,” says Hulette, who was convicted in 2015 for cooking methamphetamine and is now due to graduate with his MSW from the University of Illinois in May 2023. (His conviction was for a Class 1 felony; he was required to serve at least 50% of his sentence.) So, Hulette said “No thank you” to early release, spent an additional six months in prison, and continued to prepare himself for a better life on the outside.

Tours of Duty

Hulette’s early road prepared him for the many bumps he would encounter later in life. “I was born in rural poverty in Indiana, dirt road, trailer, holes in the wall at some points, single mom with five kids, a lot of welfare, some sexual abuse as a child from my stepfather,” he says. “Looking back on my life, I’m like, how did I even get through all this.”

In 2001, Hulette joined the National Guard after graduating from high school, serving in the African nation of Djibouti for six months before going for eight more months to southern Iraq and Kuwait.

Upon his return to the States, Hulette enrolled at Purdue, going to school during the day and working 12-hour shifts as a 911 emergency dispatcher at night. That was interrupted by a third tour of duty, again in Iraq. This one, he says, was the toughest of all.

“There was a lot of existential angst,” he says. “You’re sitting in a vehicle staring at a road in front of you, wondering if it’s going to blow up or not. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t, and sometimes people are injured, and sometimes they aren’t.”

In 2009, Hulette injured his shoulder and was prescribed OxyContin from the VA hospital to manage his pain. Soon, he was on back-to-back prescriptions of 240 pills a month. “I wasn’t prepared for how it would make me feel,” Hulette says of the opioid. Besides alleviating pain, OxyContin leads to a euphoric, relaxing high.

The downside, Hulette now knows, is the drug is highly addictive.

“That was the beginning of a slow, downward spiral, which ended my time at Purdue,” he says. He left Purdue one course shy of graduating with a degree in education, intent on becoming a high school English teacher.

Road to Recovery

It was his own high school English teacher, Mrs. Brown, who gave him a bookmark that said “It’s never too late to be what you always wanted to be.”

Having served time in prison, he could no longer be a teacher. While he served his final six months—which he was not required to—he contemplated what he wanted to do with his life. He had become an adept welder in prison and figured he could make a decent living at that trade.

But then he thought again.

“In prison, I learned I was privileged being a vet, being a white male,” he says. “I didn’t want to waste the opportunity that comes with those privileges. That would be disrespectful. I told myself I can’t just let all these experiences be for nothing. I can use them going forward.”

So, after spending time in a halfway house and then in a home for homeless veterans in Springfield upon his release from prison, he moved to Champaign with his partner in 2018. He spent a semester at Parkland College in 2019 and then started at the University of Illinois in fall 2019, in the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES).

That was after applying to, and being turned down by, the School of Social Work. He had determined to be a social worker because “I saw a gap in the number of social workers who have my background. I know how difficult it is to recover from heroin addiction, how difficult it is for a vet to deal with that stuff, and I felt like the VA could use me.”

But the School said he wasn’t quite ready and suggested ACES, saying it could be a pathway to the MSW that he wanted.

“So that’s the road I went down,” he says. Having earned a 3.96 GPA at Parkland, he made the Dean’s List at ACES. When he reapplied to the School of Social Work, they deemed him ready.

“Both the university and the School have been so welcoming and supportive,” he says. “They’re willing to listen and respect my insights on things from my own experiences. I always felt like a very valuable member of the classroom.”

Hulette will do his internship at Two Roads Wellness Clinic, which integrates mental health treatment with expressive arts therapy, family therapy, nutritional counseling, and more. He eventually would like to end up with the VA, giving back to the organization that has helped him in so many ways over the years.

“Most of the social workers at the VA were good to me,” he says. “They were non-judgmental, so if you made a mistake, they’d say it didn’t matter, we’ll keep working at it.”

Hulette wants to be that person for somebody. Specifically, for some vet.

A New Man

Hulette has a lengthily-worded tattoo on each arm. One is from Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche. “Basically, it talks about how you can’t be a creator if you haven’t destroyed yourself,” he explains. “I felt like he was speaking directly to me when I read it. I’ve destroyed myself, and now it’s my responsibility to recreate myself.”

Here is how Hulette has recreated himself: He is a gym rat, working on body building four or five times a week. He meditates. He manages his stress, including PTSD, without medication. He has been sober since December 23, 2014, the day of his arrest. He is a voracious reader (“I read over 120 books in prison, all the world classics, using my disability income from the VA to have my mom send me books”). He is in a steady relationship with his partner and is a loving stepfather to her 15 year-old son. He has reconstructed, step by painful step, a loving relationship with the son and daughter that he fathered. He somehow finds time to drive all over the Midwest as his three children take part in travel hockey, figure skating, travel soccer, and basketball competitions.

Someday, perhaps, Ian Hulette might add writer to that recreation list. “When the kids are old enough and I’m on a work schedule and I’m not reading scientific articles to write a paper, I’d like to write,” he says. “Everyone in the School tells me I have a great story to tell.”

He does.

But for now, he’s too busy living it to tell it.

RETURNING—VIRTUALLY—TO EARN AN MSW

Clair Brendel works a busy, full-time job for the Red Cross. But, thanks to the School of Social Work’s iMSW (online) program, she is earning her degree from her home in Kentucky.

Clair Brendel’s work in disaster relief with the American Red Cross has taken her to Fayetteville, North Carolina; Ventura, California; Chicago, Illinois; Dayton, Ohio; Kokomo, Indiana; San Juan, Puerto Rico; and Washington, DC. She’s also been to Texas to pilot new software and taught in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Pasadena.

But she’s earning her MSW from the School of Social Work in her living room in Louisville, Kentucky.

“I hadn’t taken any virtual classes in higher education before my MSW,” says Brendel, who currently serves as regional planning and preparedness manager for the Red Cross. “It’s really opened up the opportunity to come back to a school I love and connect with professionals that I admire without having to uproot and move again. And I found the program to be affordable compared to other schools I was looking at. So, it was a no-brainer in terms of coming back. I am very grateful I got to come back to Illinois for my MSW.”

Deciding to Pursue Her MSW

Brendel, who earned her BSW from the School of Social Work in 2015, decided to pursue her MSW to open up career opportunities in clinical mental health. “I knew I was going to get my MSW sooner or later,” she says. “I had just been waiting to land on what I wanted to do with my MSW.”

When COVID-19 struck, the Red Cross opened a virtual family assistance center with a call-in number for people who had lost loved ones to the disease. “I wanted so strongly to be a part of that team, but I couldn’t do it without an MSW,” Brendel says. While she still enjoyed the planning and management responsibilities in her work, she wanted to be more in the trenches. So, she began looking for the right fit for an MSW program.

She quickly landed on the School of Social Work.

“One of the reasons Illinois was at the top of my list was the research that Dr. Tara Powell has been doing in disaster response and disaster mental health practices,” she says. Powell, an associate professor in the School, is renowned for her research in those areas.

Disaster Relief Experience

Brendel brings a lot of disaster work experience to her work as an MSW student. She was a casework supervisor for the Kokomo Tornadoes and Louisiana flooding in 2016, handled donations for Hurricane Matthew in North Carolina, operated as a planning specialist for Hurricane Maria in the northeast Caribbean the following year, served as chief of staff at the American Red Cross national headquarters, helping to manage five different large-scale disasters at the same time, including a wildfire in Oregon, Typhoon Yutu in the Philippines, Hurricane Michael in the southeastern US, and most recently was a planning manager for the tornadoes that hit Kentucky in December 2021. The last hit close to home—literally.

“The tornado was in Kentucky, which is very much my second home,” she says. “My family has a summer house in western Kentucky. When a disaster hits in your own back yard, it’s very hard to see because you want to go and do all you can to help. But I had to work that one virtually.”

Her seven years of working in disaster response has taught her many lessons, among them that each disaster is unique. In some cases, those differences are cultural. For example, in working Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico, “it was a huge learning opportunity for me in working with cross-cultural groups. It was good to get the experience with a different culture on a response and engage with local teams that operate a little differently than you’re used to operating. It became very clear that different cultures respond to disasters differently.”

Reigniting an Old Passion

After years of working on the planning and management side of disaster response, she wants to reignite a passion of hers: mental health care.

“Mental health has been a strong passion of mine for years,” Brendel says. “As a teenager, I was diagnosed with ADHD. I had to learn pretty harshly how to deal with my own mental illness and how to stay organized and be productive and how that impacts me and how I can deal with other people.”

To help people with mental health issues in disaster situations, she realized she would need the education and training she is receiving from her MSW program.

“I’m well trained in engaging volunteers, but I can’t get experience from the Red Cross in understanding how to help somebody who’s having a mental health emergency and how to provide that counseling and service for them,” Brendel says.

Brendel has only the internship piece left to finish her MSW. She will intern with the Red Cross and graduate in May 2023. “I’ll be working to practice more of our casework and working with our mental health teams more,” she says.

From there, she will embark on a new chapter in her social work career: helping those with mental health crises in the wake of disasters.

A HEART FOR THE DISTRESSED

Rising from a tragic background, Dora Watkins is pursuing her PhD so she can bring hope and help to marginalized people living in distressed communities.

Dora Watkins, who is entering her second year in the PhD program at the School of Social Work, is focusing her research on resilience and help-seeking behaviors among high-achieving black women.

“We know resilience as a protective factor, but I see it as a potential barrier to seeking help,” says Watkins. “People place unrealistic expectations on you if you’re resilient. They expect you to bounce back from adversity, which you do, but they assume there’s no impairment. It can make your mental health care needs invisible.”

Watkins knows firsthand what she’s speaking about.

She was born in an impoverished neighborhood in Detroit to a mother who has been addicted for more than 30 years to crack cocaine. Most of her six siblings have serious health issues—cerebral palsy, epilepsy, cognitive delays. One brother has struggled with the justice system. Another is cognitively challenged and addicted to crack cocaine. She has never met three of her siblings. All seven children have different fathers. Watkins never met her biological father and never lived with her mother as a child. Raised in foster homes, she was sexually, physically, and emotionally abused. At times she was left alone to fend for a younger brother and sister, and had to resort to stealing food from a grocery store to feed them. Her mother has been in and out of rehab her whole adult life.

“I’m the only child who has been able to be okay,” Watkins says. “When my mom was pregnant with me, she would get severely ill whenever she would use drugs. Her body would just reject it every time.”

Watkins found school to be her safe space. She is the only one in her family to have a high school degree. “School was my way out,” she says. “It’s always been my therapy.”

She was twice moved ahead a grade in elementary school. School was where she shined. Teachers took her under their wing, surrounded her with books.

She graduated early from high school because of her promotions, but had trouble getting a loan for college. So, she enlisted in the Army. “My goal was always to be able to go to school,” Watkins says.

She served at Fort Lee (Virginia), Camp Casey (Dongducheon, South Korea), Fort Carson (Colorado), and Fort Jackson (South Carolina). Her favorite place to serve, she says, was in South Korea.

“The Army had a tremendous impact on my life,” she says. “The discipline I learned, the camaraderie... it was the first place I felt I belonged. And it gave me a firm foundation in terms of leadership, of teaching me how to be a leader.”

Called to Be a Social Worker

Watkins was 13 years old when she knew she was called to be a social worker. “At that point I was being adopted for the second time,” she says. “I was in and out of court, and I developed a close relationship with the social worker I had. I realized this is what I want to do. I want to help kids like me, families like mine.

“Social workers have made the greatest impact on me throughout my childhood. They empowered me, and they instilled this deep passion in me to be able to help others. I believe that everything I’ve gone through is a blueprint for me to help someone else.”

Watkins earned both her BSW (2019) and MSW (2020) from Wayne State University in Detroit before choosing the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign to pursue her doctorate. “I had meetings with various faculty members as I was making my decision,” she says. “I was really interested in the research agendas of the faculty here. It’s relevant and urgent, particularly considering vulnerable populations and marginalized and distressed communities. All of the scholarly activity here illuminates areas of deep concern for me, areas that hit close to home for me. From trauma and violence prevention to maternal mental health to substance use to social justice and mental health equity, I found the School a well-grounded place to immerse myself and explore the depths of my research interests.”

Combating the “Strong Black Woman Schema”

Those interests revolve around mental health and mental healthcare disparities. “As a black woman who is highachieving and who has always been told how resilient I am, this feeds into the phenomenon we call the ‘Strong Black Woman Schema,’ and it diverts you from seeking help when you need it,” Watkins says. “What I’ve learned from the literature is that high-achieving women severely underutilize mental health services—though they make up one of the biggest proportions of people with major depressive disorder and other serious mental illnesses.”

Watkins plans to focus her dissertation on creating an instrument to measure perceived resilience. “We have a lot of resilience scales out there but we’re not exploring how people internalize resilience or how they perceive it and how it affects them seeking help,” she says.

Working With Distressed Communities

Her plans after receiving her doctorate include disseminating the knowledge she is gaining through her doctorate work.

“I’m interested in working with distressed communities,” she says. “People in these communities don’t have access to academic journals. I want to make sure that distressed communities and marginalized people have access to knowledge so it can enhance their quality of life and improve the outcomes that are the results of social determinants such as socioeconomic status, education attainment, race, and issues like that.”

Watkins is working on building her “research toolbox” for a life of research, she says. “I want to help close race-based statistical gaps and mental health disparities, and I’m interested in helping build budding scholars—so, being a tenure-track professor.”

Empowered by the School

Just as Watkins felt empowered by the social workers in her life as a child, she feels empowered now by the School. And she is putting those leadership skills learned in the Army to work with the School.

“I’ve become the new co-president and chair of the Doctoral Social Work Association in my first year here, so I feel empowered to exercise my voice as a minority student and to illuminate issues that are centered around historically-oppressed groups,” she says. “The faculty and the program director are amazing; they really do encourage you and empower you to use your voice. So, I definitely feel seen here, and it literally feels like home.”

“You Can Beat the Odds”

Just as the social workers early in her life were role models for her, Watkins wants to be a model as well.

“I want other women of color to see me,” she says. “I’m carrying this torch to pass it along to an upcoming generation of thought leaders and innovative scholars. Someone passed that torch to me, so I want to pass it on so that the next generation of women of color, men of color, people of marginalized communities, know that you can beat the odds. You can go through a tremendous amount of adversity and still be able to overcome.”

MAKING AN IMPACT

Having earned her BSW from the School of Social Work, Sierra Fitzpatrick-Skinner is continuing on to get her MSW at the School to further her impact at a macro level.

Sierra Fitzpatrick-Skinner’s goal is to make an impact in the field of social work.

Judging from her success as a student in the School of Social Work, she is well on her way to reaching her goal. Fitzpatrick-Skinner, who graduated with her BSW in spring 2022, received three awards in her senior year:

• the Outstanding Undergraduate Award from the Social Justice & Diversity Education Department;

• the Graduating Student of the Year Award at the Ebony Excellence Awards; and

• the Most Impactful Student Award from the Central Black Student Union and CORE, a mentorship program (she was actively involved in several mentorship programs, including Reaching Across Classes, the Shelley Ambassador Program, and Organic Oneness).

The awards were based on Fitzpatrick-Skinner’s impact in the community in advocating for diversity and social justice, for her involvement in student affairs and student engagement, for her work at the Bruce D. Nesbitt African American Cultural Center, where she interned, and for her event planning, programming, and mentorship work with the Central Black Student Union and CORE.

“I was really excited to receive these awards,” Fitzpatrick-Skinner says. “I felt very honored that I was recognized for my contributions.”

Pursuing Her MSW

Fitzpatrick-Skinner will get a chance to broaden those contributions as this fall she has begun pursuit of her MSW at the School of Social Work. Her concentration is in leadership and social change, which lands her in macro practice.

“I feel that’s more fitting for the impact I want to make,” she says. “I want to draw from what I know on a personal level and make it applicable to future laws and policies. I really want to help underrepresented communities.”

Opening Up Opportunities

One area she wants to help underrepresented communities in is in opening up higher education opportunities for youths. “That’s been my main motivation since I became interested in macro practice, knowing I can have a seat at the table to create and allow other people to explore things that they aren’t familiar with,” she says. “People don’t know what they don’t have access to until you give it to them. It can be hard to dream or think of something you might want to do if you’ve never seen it done before. So, I want to open up another realm of talent and passion for them.”

School Provides Tools and Vision

Fitzpatrick-Skinner loved her time as an undergrad in the School of Social Work—she names Assistant Professor Rachel Garthe, Carol Wilson-Smith, BSW program director and clinical associate professor, Graduate Student Affairs Coordinator Sharva Hampton-Campbell, Adjunct Instructor Linda Kingery, and Director of BSW Field Education Sherrie Faulkner as particularly influential—and is eager as she begins her MSW work.

“I just love, love, love my experience with the School of Social Work!” she says. “I’m so excited to continue my education here. Every professor I’ve had has made sure we were gaining something that we could use in our own day-to-day experiences. The classes have been phenomenal.”

The School does a great job of showing students the wide range of jobs and careers in the field and of helping students build on their own strengths and passions, Fitzpatrick-Skinner says.

“The School gave me the tools and the direct vision for how to create better opportunities for myself and for others around me,” she says. “And the field placement was very eye-opening. That’s something you don’t find in every social work program in the country. I’ve gained colleagues, friends, and mentors. It’s been a great experience.”

And it’s an experience that will very soon translate into her goal of having an impact on the lives of others. “My passion for continuing on with social work is to help populations that need it the most,” she says. “I want to create spaces for them and help them explore their own personal passions.”

EMPOWERING THE NEXT GENERATION

Kevin Tan is leading a group of social workers and social work students who collectively are having a big impact on K-12 students in Danville School District 118.

Strong Kids. Random Acts of Kindness. StoryWalk. PhotoVoice. Raising Highly Capable Kids.

These are all programs spearheaded by Kevin Tan and put to use in Danville schools and the community thanks to a Restore, Reinvest, and Renew Grant awarded last year and extended this year through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority.

The grant is aimed at helping communities hit the hardest by the failed war on drugs.

“There’s not a lot of resources being channeled into communities like Danville,” says Tan, an associate professor in the School of Social Work. He points to one Danville school, Mark Denman Elementary, that has 700 students and one social worker. Thanks to the grant, 2022 MSW graduate Grace McClowry was also placed at the school.

Project Offerings

“We are offering in-person one-to-one counseling, running social and emotional groups in the schools, and working with Hope Center, a community-based after-school program in a housing complex in the community,” Tan says.

“And we have a parenting workshop called Raising Highly Capable Kids that talks about parenting issues.

“We have at least two hundred clients we’re serving right now in Danville. I have two full-time clinicians [McClowry and Lauren Lenstra] embedded in the schools and about eight part-time staff and social work students supporting them. We’re expanding our programs and services with Crosspoint Human Services joining our collaborative following an additional supplemental award that we recently received from the funder.”

Schools served, besides Mark Denman Elementary, include Meade Park Elementary, Edison Elementary, and North Ridge Middle School.

District Needs

“We are flowing with the needs of the district,” Tan says. “There are really high social and emotional needs in the district. I see this as community-engaged work, which our campus is emphasizing. The whole process is about meeting needs through research-infused practice.”

“No doubt the pandemic escalated some student behavioral issues,” he says. “Because of the isolation, the pandemic has adversely affected young people’s social skills and social development, their ability to connect with others. It impacted their social and emotional needs.”

To that end, PhD student Jenna Mahoney, who earned her MSW from the School of Social Work and who is helping Tan coordinate the entire project, has created a social-emotional calendar that offers weekly lessons from various evidence-based social-emotional curricula.

“The hope is that by integrating this calendar into weekly teaching plans, implementing social-emotional learning becomes more streamlined,” Mahoney says. She is also designing an evaluation study to measure the impact of the calendar.

Mahoney also works closely with the schools’ Positive Behavioral Intervention and Support teams. “These teams use evidence-based interventions for schoolwide initiatives to help create a safe and secure learning environment for students, families, and staff,” she says.

Program Outcomes

Students’ learning environment has benefited from the aforementioned programs that have been implemented through the project. Strong Kids promote social and emotional competence and resilience; this program ran in schools and in Hope Center in the project’s first year. Random Acts of Kindness involves a large, decorated “Garden of Kindness” board in the hallway at Meade Park Elementary, with individual acts of kindness written on flower petals and butterflies. Weekly lessons were also taught in the classrooms in which students learned ways of showing kindness to others and receiving kind acts. “This helps students experience how acts of kindness help with the overall school climate,” Tan says.

StoryWalk is centered on the book I Believe I Can by Grace Byers; the pages of the book are laminated and attached to Meade Park Elementary school’s fence. “The students would walk around the fence, read the story and were encouraged to believe in themselves to try new things and to not give up even if they fail the first time.”

Tan explains. “The whole message was ‘I believe I can’ despite the challenges of the pandemic. We did this the first year, coming out of the pandemic. It nurtured a sense of resiliency, and it was a message about diversity as well. Danville is primarily low-income and has a large percentage of African-American students, so it was about empowering the students there despite the messages that they receive at a broader level. It fostered their strengths and focused on those things they are able to do.”

PhotoVoice was a program where summer school students in Meade Park and Edison Elementary and children at Hope Center were loaned digital cameras and instructed to take photos within the grounds that represent their identity. “We asked the young people, how does this represent your identity, your sense of belonging? We fostered a sense of agency, a sense of this is who I am, this is where I belong, this is what I can do,” Tan says.

Administrators Grateful

Danville school district administrators have seen what Tan and his team and programs can do—and they’re impressed.

“We’ve interviewed teachers and administrators, and they are seeing positive changes in students’ behaviors,” Tan says. District 118 board members at the April board meeting spoke in glowing terms of the impact the program has had on its students, thanking the School of Social Work and the University of Illinois.

And perhaps more importantly, those most impacted—the students—have overwhelmingly positive responses about their experience. In both the Random Acts of Kindness and the Strong Kids programs, 92% of students said they learned at least one thing from the lessons. Multiple research publications from Tan’s team are in the pipeline. In July, Tan and his team hosted an exhibition for parents, members of the community, and key stakeholders in Danville to learn about their projects and to talk with key stakeholders about their vision for the community. Danville’s mayor, Rickey Williams, Jr., graced the event and was impressed with the depth of openness from the children reflected in the PhotoVoice display. “Many of the young people expressed concern for others instead of themselves,” Williams said. “This project is helping young people learn how to express themselves and express their emotions in a positive way.” Mayor William believes that the children want a better future for themselves and those around them.

Next Generation

“Danville is a special community,” Mahoney says. “Those who have lived there for years are invested in seeing Danville thrive. Implementing our university’s supports into the work that is already being done in the community will ideally help the community as a whole thrive.”

Adds Tan, “What we’re doing right now is really for the next generation. And it’s based on the schools’ needs and vision. We support them in that.”

HELPING TO STEM THE TIDE

Violence is a public health crisis and a leading cause of death for people in Illinois. The School of Social Work is spearheading efforts to curb and prevent it.

Two recent studies involving numerous state agencies and led by the School of Social Work have led to a four-year violence prevention plan and funding goals and priorities for the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority (ICJIA), which funded the studies.

For both studies, Assistant Professor Rachel Garthe is principal investigator and Professor Doug Smith is co-investigator. Garthe and Smith were two of the authors who wrote a Statewide Violence Prevention Plan: 2020-2024 for the ICJIA that outlined program reviews and strategies, a needs assessment of violence in Illinois, and recommendations for funding.

Study Findings

“Across most forms of violence, Illinois has higher rates of violence compared to the rate in the United States,” says Garthe, who is also undergraduate research program coordinator for the School and directs the Violence Prevention Research Lab.

“For example, about one in four youth reported being bullied in the past year, about one in five youth reported engaging in physical fighting in the past year, and about one in three women experience sexual violence or violent victimization by an intimate partner in their lifetime.”

In addition:

• some of the groups at highest risk for violence include racial, ethnic, sexual, and gender minorities;

• youth who experience violence are at a significantly higher risk for depressive feelings, suicidal ideation, and substance use, compared to those who had not experienced violence; and

• violence appears to be less of a concern to community leaders and community-elected officials than is warranted.

“Our finding on the perception of community violence comes from surveying violence prevention and intervention staff,” Garthe explains. “This suggests that staff perceive community leaders and officials to not be as motivated to work together to prevent or address violence. In order for us to see impacts on violence, we need to take a collaborative, community effort to prevent violence, with buy-in from residents and community leaders and officials. Communities across Illinois have some work to do in increasing their commitment to preventing violence.”

Five Prevention Goals

Garthe also notes that organizations and schools may not be implementing evidence-based programs. “Thus, we may be having a muted impact on violence,” she says. “We need to do a better job of making sure organizations are knowledgeable about evidence-based practices or about building evidence for their programs—for example, participating in evaluation trainings.”

Based on the data collected and analyzed, the planning group created five violence prevention goals for ICJIA funding:

• Stop violence and promote safety

• Support children, youth, and families by emphasizing programs that foster social connectedness and belonging

• Advance equity

• Support health

• Promote collaboration across state, municipal, and community-based agencies

“These goals are informing funding opportunities through the Illinois Criminal Justice Information Authority,” Garthe says. “ICJIA funds millions of dollars in violence prevention programming, and these goals guide what they want to focus on for the next few years.”

“Strong First Step”

She adds that this is one of the first statewide plans that reviews and consolidates many forms of violence, including child maltreatment, youth violence, juvenile violence offenses that result in detention, adult violent offenses, gun violence, intimate partner violence, sexual assault, and adverse childhood experiences.

“This is a strong first step toward more effective and coordinated violence prevention efforts in the state of Illinois,” Garthe says. “We hope the plan and needs assessment is useful to state agencies, community organizations, city and county governments, and other groups looking to cultivate strong violence prevention initiatives.”

UNCOVERING EVIDENCE TO IMPROVE CHILD WELFARE

Hyunil Kim is conducting studies that have implications for community-based services and large-scale policies to improve the wellbeing of children.

After earning his MSW, Hyunil Kim began working as a child protective services caseworker. His experience taught him two things: One, child abuse and neglect is far more rampant than he originally thought. And two, while child protective services provide important and valuable services, it does not serve as a preventive for child abuse and neglect.

And that is where his interest lies.

So, Kim returned to school to earn his PhD in social work. Now, as an assistant professor in the School of Social Work, he devotes his research to developing the best possible evidence to help improve the safety and welfare of children. To that end, he is currently in the midst of national and statewide data analyses and literature reviews surrounding child abuse and neglect, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“In my work as a children’s service worker,” Kim says, “I got this curiosity about why these people keep reappearing in the system. We know that about four percent of children in the US are reported each year to CPS. Now, it’s actually more than 4.5 percent. That’s not a small number.”

It led Kim to investigate how many US children will receive at least one CPS investigation for child maltreatment in their lifetime.

“My calculation, based on national data, is thirty-seven percent, which is horrifying,” he says. “Child abuse and neglect is very prevalent, and is linked to a wide range of negative outcomes—developmental issues, cognitive and emotional issues, and premature death.”

Investigating Overlooked Risk Factors

In his studies, Kim is investigating several risk factors for child maltreatment to contribute to the existing knowledge base. These factors include food insecurity, home visits, mental health services, and poverty and opioid usage.

“We know the relationship between poverty and child maltreatment but we don’t know if it’s getting worse or not over recent years,” Kim says. “We have emerging evidence regarding opioid usage and child maltreatment but we don’t know if it’s getting stronger or weaker over time. So, I checked those things.”

Main Findings

Some of Kim’s main findings to date include:

• A positive connection exists between rates of food insecurity and child maltreatment reports among communities.

• As home visiting provisions rise in communities, their maltreatment report rates fall. (“Yet, small effect sizes suggest that we need to think about not just home visits but how we can combine them with other community services to address serious risk factors for maltreatment, like poverty, substance abuse, and mental health problems.”)

• When rates of mental stress increase, maltreatment report rates increase in communities. However, having more mental health professionals was protective and lowered maltreatment report rates in communities.

• Both child poverty rates and opioid prescription rates had significant relationships with maltreatment report rates among communities. (“And they’re getting stronger in recent years, which obviously is not good.”)

Rise in Child Maltreatment Report Rates

Another troubling trend that Kim has discovered is the rising rate of reported child maltreatment.

“Maltreatment report rates have increased for the last decade except for the COVID period,” he says. “So, from 2007 to 2010, the report rate was around 4.0 percent of all US children. After that, it consistently increased to 4.8 percent and 4.7 percent in 2018 and 2019, respectively. So, that’s a huge increase. We don’t yet know the reason for the increase.

“And the child maltreatment report rates have increased way more in high poverty communities. The recent increase nationally was led mainly by an increase in high poverty areas. So, the poverty disparity in child welfare treatment is getting stronger, and that’s another scary part.”

LEARNING TO DESIGN INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR SOCIETY’S CHALLENGES

A U of I alumnus shares his social design expertise and experience in a new online class created jointly by the Siebel Center for Design and the School of Social Work.

One of Brandon Middleton’s many passions is guiding his students on a journey where they discover how to apply design to complex social challenges.

Through this journey, students learn about the critical importance of incorporating marginalized voices in design processes and, in doing so, effecting change through the design of innovative and socially impactful programs. Middleton, who earned an electrical engineering degree in 2007 from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, is currently co-teaching, along with adjunct instructor Bert Zhang, a new undergraduate course entitled Introduction to Social Design. The course, a collaboration between the Siebel Center for Design and the School of Social Work, is the gateway course for an interdisciplinary certificate in social design, which is planned to roll out in spring 2023.

Designing Solutions for Societal Challenges

“We are giving our students foundational knowledge of some of the social challenges our society faces, giving them visibility to some of the organizations in their own community that are trying to make progress toward those challenges, and equipping them to do something about it,” says Middleton, who is a School of Social Work adjunct instructor, a lecturer in d.school at Stanford, and a senior business development manager for Amazon Web services in Palo Alto, California, where he teaches the social design class remotely.

Ben Lough, professor in the School of Social Work and director of social innovation for Gies College of Business, worked with Middleton on the syllabus and course structure.

“We recognize that many of the solutions social workers design aim to solve challenges with vulnerable populations, minorities, and other people who are often left out of the equation,” Lough says. “We wanted a course that helped students to understand that if they are designing a solution for any population, they need to ensure that the voices of the people they are designing for are included and prioritized in conversations about the solution.”

Brandon Middleton

Involving Community

Middleton was chosen to teach the course, Lough says, because of his expertise and previous experience teaching in the renowned d.school at Stanford. “He has taught courses on designing with minority populations and the importance of engaging marginalized communities in design work,” Lough says.

For example, Middleton created and taught one course in the d.school called “Community College: Designing Black and Brown Spaces,” that explored how to create space for Black and Brown genius and creativity in community, academic, and corporate spaces.

“I thought I’d get about fifty or sixty people to sign up, but we ended up with seven hundred and fifty,” Middleton recalls.

In that course—as in the Introduction to Social Design course—Middleton makes space for community voices to be heard.

“Thursdays are our community conversations in the Social Design course,” he explains. “Anyone from the community can come into these conversations synchronously or asynchronously on YouTube.”

Innovative Guest Lecturers

Each Thursday, a guest lecturer from the community holds a conversation with students and community members alike. “I’m pretty intentional about picking people outside of the mainstream, people who are trailblazers and underdogs within their field,” Middleton says. These lecturers share tips and tricks that have helped them succeed.

“Many of our special guests have come in and said, ‘Hey, I’m just like you, I was in your shoes not too long ago, so just look at me as a peer who has experienced different things from you,’” Middleton says. “And they often say the students have a different perspective that they don’t have, and they value the students as much as the students value them.”

Delivering Value to Society

On Tuesdays, Middleton and Zhang speak about topics that help create a foundation of social design for students. “We’re talking about social impact, exploring the operational side of delivering value to society, and that could be in a number of different areas,” Middleton says. “we’ve talked about climate change, about poverty, about violence, about education, about a number of things that are affecting us.

“As an individual, there’s a way to participate and bring value and plug away at a particular problem. As a designer, there’s a framework for you to be able to think about things and test and prototype ideas and try them out and receive validation from the market or your audience and iterate on those prototypes in order to refine what you’re offering. We’re teaching them to bring a designer’s lens to see how they can prototype solutions.” Just as the challenges that society faces are diverse, so are the students in Intro to Social Design. “We have freshmen all the way through seniors, we’ve got engineering and math and computer science and architecture and liberal arts and business students. It’s a diverse mix,” Middleton says. In addition, several community members are auditing the class.

“It has brought some interesting dynamics and insights,” he says.

Reimagining What Education Could Look Like

Middleton believes that the opportunity for innovation in higher education towards building community is creating a “perfect storm.”

“It seems the way education has been delivered, we might be ripe for changing some systems and delivery methods, and I’m excited to be on the bleeding edge of what could be,” he says. “The ideas that we offer in this course, in the format and in the content, is meant to challenge the status quo, and I’m excited about what might come in the future in terms of taking this community concept and applying it to the university’s desire to improve diversity and inclusion and equity.

“This course is helping students reimagine what education could look like and what their agency as students could look like.”

Ben Lough

EXAMINING THE IMPACT OF DNA EVIDENCE IN SEXUAL ASSAULT PROSECUTIONS

DNA evidence had a dramatic relationship with sexual assault prosecutions and convictions in one city, according to research led by Theodore P. Cross of the School of Social Work’s Children and Family Research Center.

When DNA evidence is available that matches the suspects in sexual assault cases, prosecutors are more likely to litigate and the odds of conviction are more than nine times greater than cases without biological evidence, a new study found.

In a project funded by the National Institute of Justice, researchers examined the role of DNA evidence in more than 100 sexual assault cases accepted for prosecution in one metropolitan jurisdiction between 2005 and 2010.

They found that DNA evidence had a dramatic relationship with cases’ progression in the criminal justice system and on conviction rates. Almost 75% of the cases in which the DNA profile matched the suspect resulted in a guilty plea or a trial, compared with less than a third of cases without a laboratory report.

“We did what we thought was the most thorough and incisive research about how DNA is actually used and how it relates to the outcomes of prosecuting sexual assault,” said first author Ted Cross, a senior research specialist and professor of social work at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. “What we found is this evidence really does matter.”

Megan Alderden, a professor and chair of criminology at DePaul University; and Laura Siller and Maja Vlajnic, then both doctoral candidates at Northeastern University, co-wrote the study. Published in the journal Violence Against Women, the research sheds light on some of the complexities of using DNA evidence in sexual assault prosecutions.

The team said its findings underscore the importance of quality forensic medical exams, investments in DNA analysis and training prosecutors how to use DNA evidence effectively.

“Our research benefited from a statewide system in Massachusetts that tracks data on forensic medical exams in sexual assault cases,” Cross said. “Every provider that conducts a forensic exam faxes a report to a state agency. That created a data set that enabled us to link prosecutor cases with actual crime lab results, ascertain what those results were and the actions taken by prosecutors.”

Siller and Vlajnic also spent hundreds of hours combing through prosecutors’ paper records and coding data that was linked with information from the state database.

Despite public misperceptions that biological evidence is ubiquitous in criminal justice cases, DNA evidence is not a given, Cross said. Prosecutors must actively seek it out, and they are selective about the cases for which they take the extra steps to obtain it.

“Testing for DNA is a separate test from the standard lab tests, and not every case gets that test,” Cross said. “Crime labs and police agencies are overwhelmed. Sometimes evidence kits don’t make it to the crime lab. And even if they do, they’re not necessarily tested.”

To match DNA with a suspect, prosecutors often must obtain a court order for the police to bring the suspect in to collect a sample, usually with an oral swab.

“In that respect, DNA evidence can be both the cause and the result of deciding to prosecute a case, and prosecutors need to be aware of that complex relationship,” Cross said.

In the majority of the 106 cases studied, a crime laboratory report was available but the sample did not match the suspect, the researchers found. DNA matches to the suspects occurred in about 25% of the cases, according to the laboratory reports or prosecution files.

Matching a DNA profile to an unknown assailant whose data is on file in the FBI’s DNA database happens in a relatively small number of cases, Cross said.

In examining how frequently prosecutors used several types of evidence, the researchers found that physical evidence from the crime scene and nongenital injury evidence were used in more than a third of the cases. Evidence on DNA matches to the suspects was used less frequently, presented in slightly more than 20% of the cases.

In a related study by the team that was published in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence in 2021, prosecutors said biological evidence such as DNA was important to their trial preparations because of a potential “CSI effect” –a reference to the TV crime drama that suggests jurors expect biological evidence to be presented.

“Some prosecutors feel that juries expect forensic evidence even when it’s not reasonable to obtain it and it’s not strictly probative – that is, it doesn’t help logically prove the case,” Cross said. “Regardless, the prosecutors felt that the juries needed, wanted and expected it.”

Likewise, prosecutors said victims’ willingness to undergo a forensic medical exam – which can be long, uncomfortable and emotionally difficult, Alderden said – bolsters their credibility with jurors and communicates that the victims and prosecutors take the case seriously.

DNA evidence helps establish that the suspect had sexual contact with the victim – even if the suspect claims that the act was consensual – and counters assertions that the allegations are fabricated.

However, widespread public awareness and juries’ expectations about forensic evidence may make it difficult to proceed with sexual assault cases that lack a DNA match, the researchers said.

There are many circumstances outside victims’ control when biological evidence cannot be obtained although an assault occurred, such as when an assailant uses a condom or situations that prevent law enforcement from obtaining a sample from a suspect, according to the study.

“Given the amount of trauma that victims experience, it is important that criminal justice practitioners and jurors don’t jump to the conclusion that just because there is no DNA evidence there’s some indication that the victim is not being truthful,” Alderden said. “DNA and other biological evidence are simply not always available in these cases.”

THE CHANCELLOR’S CALL TO ACTION TO ADDRESS RACISM & SOCIAL INJUSTICE RESEARCH PROGRAM

The School of Social Work is proud that our faculty members were prominent in receiving grants through the Chancellor’s Call to Action to Address Racism & Social Injustice. This program is designed to recognize the critical need for universities to prioritize research focused on systemic racial inequities and injustices that exist both in our communities and in higher education. Grants are intended to support the expansion of community-based knowledge that advances the understanding of systemic racism and generationally embedded racial disparity.

Trauma-Informed Simulations: A Strategy to Address Community Mental Health Trauma Resulting from Systemic Racism and Police Violence | Project Leaders: Chi-Fang Wu (School of Social Work); Kevin Tan (School of Social Work); Terry Ostler (School of Social Work); Alice K. Cary (U of I Police Department); David Chih (Student Affairs, Asian American Cultural Center)

A trauma-informed approach to address the institutional structures that sustain the mental health sequelae of racial trauma and police violence through live simulations enacted in community libraries. These simulations will be developed through a collaboration with the School of Social Work, the UIUC Police Department, and four UIUC cultural centers, starting with the Asian American Culture Center, each representing key stakeholders to address systematic racism in the university and broader communities. They will be informed by lived experiences of racism, hatred, and police violence that have taken place in our university and community and aim to promote racial healing and increase community trust in police. Eight simulations will be delivered over the course of the 2023 academic year that will form a training program that will be pilot tested at the UIUC Police Summer Training Institute in Summer 2023. Through our interdisciplinary partnership, we will develop a formalized tool kit that includes annotated simulations on systemic racism, police violence, and racial healing that can be used in trainings for police and for university cultural centers across the US.

Understanding Challenges and Strategies to Assist Foster Care Providers in Meeting the Needs of AfricanAmerican Children Involved in the Child Welfare System | Project Leaders: Robin LaSota (School of Social Work); Jennifer Manthei (University of Illinois-Springfield, Anthropology); Tiffani Saunders (Memorial Health Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion); Valarie Chavis (Culturally Fluent Families); Rosalyn Lindsay-Simmons (Primed for Life); Chequita Brown (College of Education)

Studies show that Black children do better when placed with Black foster parents, where they can develop a strong cultural identity and integration in the Black community, which are associated with better mental health resilience and social well being. However, approximately one fourth of foster care placements in Illinois are transracial. The goal of this qualitative research project is to understand parenting strategies and training needs for positive youth identity development and supports for navigating experiences of racism among foster and adoptive parents and their children, drawing from the lived experiences of Black birth parents, and White and Black foster parents, raising Black children in care. How can we prepare and support transracial foster families in addressing needs of Black children in care? What can we learn from Black foster and birth parents’ experiences to improve positive racial identity and community integration for Black children and youth in foster care? How can we adapt the “best practices” found in popular, academic, and professional literature and media to provide appropriate training and support? The project engages complementary strengths of UIUC and UIS researchers, Illinois family advocates and race equity leaders, child welfare leaders and practitioners and training specialists to translate research into practice.

Closing the Racial Disparity Gap in Juveniles Transferred to Adult Court | Project Leaders: Doug Smith (School of Social Work); Ebonie Epinger (School of Social Work); Lisa Jacobs (School of Law, Loyola University); Robin Fretwell Wilson (College of Law)

This project will collect data from case files of all juveniles who were transferred to adult court from years 20192022. Black youth are disproportionately transferred to adult court, which is known to have a negative impact on youth who lose the protections of the juvenile system. This project investigates whether Black youth are disproportionately transferred when other factors are held constant such as number of prior charges, severity of offense, and age. Furthermore, we investigate whether accomplice liability laws, which assume culpability of all youth present during an incident, are disproportionately affecting Black youth and represent a form of structural racism. The data generated in this project will be novel and have high potential for policy changes that lead to more equitable outcomes in the juvenile justice system.

Empowering Youth Impacted by Violence in Champaign County to Promote Health Equity: A Photo-Voice Project | Project Leaders: Liliane Windsor (School of Social Work); Jeffrey Ford (Retired Judge); Charles Burton (Don Moyers Boys and Girls Club)

Violent crime reports in Champaign County have risen by approximately 50% from 2019 to 2020. The increase is expected to be higher for 2021. Most of these have disproportionately impacted the Black community. This project will follow community based participatory (CBPR) principles to develop infrastructure to collaboratively define, explain, and address violence in Champaign County. In the project, emerging adults at risk for engaging in violence will participate in critical dialogues with a diverse team of peers, professionals, formerly incarcerated people who are committed to promoting community health, community members impacted by violence, and family members to merge their experiences with scientific knowledge and identify resources available at the community and at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The project will include youth between ages 17 to 25 to: 1) implement a photo voice project to express youth’s perspectives through a photo exhibit; and 2) establish a sustainable youth collaborative board that will serve as a long term vehicle to elevate the voices of emerging adults at risk for engaging in violence and develop solutions to promote peaceful solutions to conflict and healthier communities.

Champaign County Guaranteed Income Project | Project Leaders: Christopher Larrison (School of Social Work); Brent Robert (College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Department of Psychology); William Schneider (School of Social Work); Elsa Augustine (Interdisciplinary Health Sciences Institute, Center for Social and Behavioral Science)

Housing insecurity has reached historically high levels across the nation and disproportionately impacts lowincome Black, Latinx, Asian, and mixed-race families. Champaign County is not immune to this problem despite having a reasonably priced housing market and a higher-than-average rental vacancy rate. During the past decade, traditional homeless services have not decreased the number of sheltered homeless children identified under the McKinney-Vento Act in Champaign County. This Call to Action project will design and implement the Champaign County Guaranteed Income Project (CCGIP), a micro-pilot of guaranteed basic income for families of school-age children experiencing homelessness in Champaign County. The goal of CCGIP is to design an effective, unconditional cash transfer program that decreases the number of families with school age children experiencing sheltered homelessness in Champaign County.

To achieve this, the CCGIP will first develop a profile of families with children identified as homeless by the McKinney-Vento Act in Champaign County; then design a guaranteed basic income (GBI) program based on the profile of these families and community input; and implement and evaluate the GBI program with ten families to pave the way for program expansion.

Enacting Collaborative Partnerships to Develop a Sustainable School-Based Mental Health Intervention to Counter Negative Effects of Racial and Violent Trauma on Black Youth in Champaign Unit 4 Schools | Project Leaders: Jarrett Lewis, (College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology), James Harden, (Champaign Unit 4 School District), Amanda Gray, (Champaign Unit 4 School District), Sara Sanders, (Franklin STEAM Academy), M Lydia Khuri, (College of Education, Department of Educational Psychology), Lindsey Trout, (School of Social Work), Amy Cohen, (College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Department of Psychology), Joseph Cohen, (College of Liberal Arts & Sciences, Department of Psychology), Emily Stone, (College of Education, Department of Public Education).

Contextualized mental health services for Black youth are particularly needed because of the disproportionate impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, racial trauma, and increasing gun violence on their mental well-being and school engagement. This project will address mental health disparities affecting Black youth via a communityuniversity collaboration by developing a model for implementation and evaluation of a trauma-focused, culturally informed school-based mental health intervention. The project has two central aims: (a) identify and amend practices that may reinforce structural racism and negatively impact Black students’ mental health and (b) implement a school-based mental health intervention to address the impact of racial and violent trauma on Black youth at a Champaign middle school, Franklin STEAM Academy. This project is an ongoing collaboration between Champaign Unit 4 School District administrators, Franklin STEAM Academy administrators and mental health practitioners, and the University of Illinois Clinical-Community Psychology, Counseling Psychology, and Social Work faculty to support and prioritize Black youth’s mental health in Champaign Unit 4 schools.

THE COMMUNITY LEARNING LAB

The Community Learning Lab (CLL) creates and supports relationships between the community and the students at the University of Illinois in a partnership that is mutually beneficial in the areas of sustainability, service, growth, and education.

2021-2022 NUMBERS

STUDENT PARTICIPANTS

9 2 3 4 PROJECTS COMPLETED

1 3 , 7 2 2 TOTAL SERVICE HOURS

4 6 CLASSES COLLEGES CAMPUS PARTICIPANTS

1 2

7 7 COMMUNITY PARTNERS

The CLL and WeCU partnership extends project matching across the university to better meet the needs of community partners.