UNE School of Social Work receives $996k grant to support at-risk children and families
Portland, ME (PRWEB) November 05, 2014 -- As a way to provide treatment and support for school-aged children and families identified as at-risk for harmful behaviors, the University of New England School of Social Work will use a three-year, $996,260 grant from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources Administration (HRSA) to fund the Community Access to Child Health in Maine (CATCH-ME) Project.
The CATCH-ME Project aims to increase the number of clinical social workers in Maine, and to equip them with attitudes, skills and knowledge to excel in the field. Grant funds will provide approximately 70 UNE master’s of Social Work students with $10,000 stipends to train in the field of child, adolescent and family risk prevention, intervention and treatment. As childhood exposure to violence has been proven to negatively affect future learning and behavior, this project will serve as a protective measure for children, and advance the welfare of community members and families.
“The School of Social work is thrilled to receive its second HRSA stipend grant to support students who otherwise might not have been able to obtain a graduate education,” said Shelley Cohen Konrad, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., F.N.A.P., associate professor in UNE’s School of Social Work. “This grant will allow students to focus on positively impacting the lives of Maine's children, and improving the state of the community as a whole.”
Health professionals, parents and community members will collaborate to develop the project’s educational and curricular design. Konrad will serve as principal investigator with Kerry Dunn, J.D., Ph.D., UNE School of Social Work, and Leslie Ochs, Pharm.D., Ph.D., UNE College of Pharmacy as co-directors.
Contributing to the Behavioral Health Workforce Education and Training for Professionals and Paraprofessionals grant team are Danielle Wozniak, Ph.D., David Prichard, Ph.D., Ellen Rondina, M.S.W., Wanda Anderson, M.S.W., and Kelli Fox, M.S.W., all from the UNE School of Social Work, and Nicole O’Brien, M.A., from the UNE School of Community and Population Health.
This is the second grant UNE’s School of Social Work has received from HRSA; the first was a $480,000 allotment in 2012 for the Rural Inter-Professional Clinical Expansion (RICE) Project. The RICE Project focused on increasing clinical social workers in medically underserved areas in high need of mental and behavioral health services.
For more information about the CATCH-ME Project, please visit the UNE website at: http://www.une.edu/wchp/socialwork/admission/catch-me-stipend
About The University of New England
The University of New England (UNE) is an innovative health sciences university grounded in the liberal arts. It has two distinctive coastal Maine campuses and a campus in Tangier, Morocco. With internationally recognized scholars in the sciences, health, medicine and the humanities, UNE offers more than 40 undergraduate, graduate and professional degree programs, and is home to Maine’s only medical and dental schools. It is one of a select group of private universities with a comprehensive health education mission that includes medicine, pharmacy, dental medicine, nursing and an array of allied health professions. Visit http://www.une.edu.
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Jen Porto, University of New England, http://www.une.edu, +1 (207) 221-4376, [email protected]
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