The purpose of the Center is to maintain a research program that is responsive to the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services' mission and responsibilities in relation to adoption as a permanency solution for dependent children in care who cannot return to their families and that contributes to knowledge about permanency through adoption and the promotion of child and family well-being in adoptive families.
For more information about the Center for Adoption Studies visit the Adoption Center's Web site or contact .
This project, funded by a grant from the Department of Health & Human Services through the Administration for Children & Families, the Children's Bureau, provides an opportunity for Illinois State University's School of Social Work to assist in upgrading the professionalism of the practice of child welfare.
Through offering tuition assistance and stipends to graduate social work students, it provides the field of child welfare with well-prepared individuals willing to go directly into the practice of child welfare.
Through the expertise of a previously well-established grant program for the undergraduate social work (BSW) program (Project Building Bridges), this current project also works to enhance the professionalism of the field of child welfare. This program recruits and prepares graduate students for professional child welfare careers in partnership with public and private child welfare agencies. Well-prepared MSW graduates are highly sought after by these agencies. This project provides previously unavailable assistance to students allowing them to gain a valuable education that will equip them for positions in child welfare agencies. It also supports the development of stronger working relationships between social work programs and child welfare agencies in Illinois.
The project's focus on providing additional juvenile court training for students and current child welfare practitioners contributes to strengthening working relationships between agencies and the court system. All project efforts will contribute to enhancing the image of child welfare careers in the community-at-large. Both traditional and non-traditional students have been recruited for the project with a special emphasis on individuals who have never been employed in the child welfare arena, and who may be able to increase their knowledge base, practice skills and obtain a desirable educational credential through participation in a heretofore financially inaccessible educational opportunity.
Heading into its final year of funding, this program is available only to currently enrolled Illinois State graduate Social Work students. Since the federal funding ends September of 2007, the current program will also be discontinued in its present form at that time.
For more information contact or the .
In the course of over 10 years, Illinois State University's School of Social Work was awarded several child welfare training grants by the Department of Health & Human Services, Administration for Children, Youth & Families, the Children's Bureau. These particular projects were designed to provide child welfare workers and their supervisors with skills and knowledge in working with mental health, domestic violence, and substance-affected families.
Lighthouse Institute at Chestnut Health Systems worked with the School of Social Work to provide quality training to child welfare, mental health, and domestic violence workers throughout the State of Illinois. This training is being facilitated under the project direction of Dennis Crowell and the training management of Randall Webber. These projects have provided practical knowledge and skills that can be effectively transferred from supervisor to line worker, and have brought in over $1.5 million in grant funding.
Data from a variety of sources indicates that a very high percentage of child welfare cases within the State of Illinois involve the use of mood-altering substances by one or both parents. These cases are particularly difficult to manage, as addicted clients are generally resistant to substance abuse treatment, and in most cases require a wide range of adjunctive services. In addition, the passage of the Adoption and Safe Families Act of 1997 (ASFA) has resulted in the need to make permanency decisions more rapidly than ever before. This can be a difficult task, since addiction recovery is a lifelong process characterized in many cases by one or more relapses before stable abstinence is achieved. At the same time, in order to return children to a home in which substance abuse has been a problem or allow children to remain in an intact family in which one or both parents are substance abusers, child welfare workers must document that the client has made "substantial progress" in addiction treatment.
Working with such addicted, Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS)-involved clients is difficult and appears to contribute significantly to the high rates of "burnout" and job turnover within the child welfare field. Conversely, transferring knowledge and, more importantly, practical skills related to effectively managing cases in which substance abuse is a critical issue will decrease stress and turnover among this population. Since, ultimately, the child welfare supervisor is responsible for the functioning of direct service staff, much of the training was offered through these projects focused on supervisory personnel.
Curricula from these various trainings have all been archived the National Clearinghouse for Child Abuse and Neglect (NCAAN). As future projects are undertaken related to these topics, information will continue to be posted through this School of Social Work Web site.
For more information contact the .
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