一个为期两年的, $500,000 grant from Boston Children’s Hospital will fund a partnership between the 太阳城网赌平台 School of 社会工作 and Boston Public Schools to provide mental health services and 支持黑人和拉丁裔儿童.
The grant supports the creation of an Integrated Supervision Initiative at BPS in which experienced Black and Latinx social workers are matched with recently graduated Black and Latinx social workers. The latter group will receive one-on-one 监督 and coaching to strengthen their professional skills to better serve Black and Latinx children and families. Both cohorts also will receive 监督 training at BCSSW.
A joint effort between BCSSW’s award-winning 拉丁裔领导倡议 and the school’s recently launched 黑人领导倡议, the BPS project addresses disparities in mental health care for Latinx and Black children and families—an inequality that has been exacerbated by the pandemic, according to ISI co-investigators Rocío Calvo and Tyrone M. 羊皮纸.
太阳城网赌平台 School of 社会工作 colleagues (L-R) Rocío Calvo, 梅娜·索托, 泰隆羊皮纸, and Lujuana Milton will run the Integrated Supervision Initiative. (摄影:Caitlin Cunningham)
“Black and Latinx children have experienced more death, 疾病, 比其他孩子更容易受到经济影响, which has worsened their mental health and further limited their access to care,卡尔沃说, an associate professor and founding director of the LLI, 它在2020年获得了Excelencia的认可! in Education for accelerating the educational success of Latinx students.
"Black and Latinx children are three times more likely to access mental health services in schools than in clinical settings. 校内社工识别需求, 提供直接服务, and provide links to external resources that promote child mental health and family well-being. High-quality 监督 is essential for the professional development of social work professionals, and to improve children’s mental health outcomes. 然而, it is rarely approached as a distinct professional competence that requires intentional training.”
拉丁裔领导力倡议模式, 卡尔沃指出, utilizes LLI alumni as field supervisors of current LLI students as they follow a training model of ethnic, 文化, and language concordance; under the direction of LLI Assistant Director 梅娜·索托, BCSSW trains the LLI alumni in supervising students. This ongoing connection with alumni gave the LLI leadership insight into the mental health crisis among Latinx children exacerbated by COVID-19, 她说, and pointed up the need for ethnically and linguistically concordant 监督.
Knowing that the situation was similar for Black children in BPS, LLI invited their colleagues from the 黑人领导倡议 to join them in devising a project that would answer community health advocates’ call for proposals to tackle the mental health crisis for underserved children and families. Part-time faculty member and BLI program coordinator Lujuana Milton ’06, M.S.W. ’07—who is president of the BCSSW 校友 Board—will join Soto in running the training program.
The ISI collaboration is the latest venture for the BLI, which was launched last fall. 在BLI的头几个月里, 羊皮纸 designed an Afrocentric social work field of practice and accompanying course that acknowledges, 赞赏, 中心在, and supports the behavioral process of the African diaspora while paying attention to African-oriented philosophy, 信仰, 值, 而仪式是健康生活的基础. In addition, he and BLI co-director Assistant Professor Samuel L. 布拉德利小. conceived a Black Leadership Certificate program with courses focused on the history of activism in Black communities and Afrocentric organizations.
“It is pivotal to expand the knowledge base 和培训 in culturally grounded practice for and with individuals of the African diaspora to the current and future mental health workforce,羊皮纸说。. “If we want to improve the provision of mental and social services among Black and Latinx communities, it is pivotal to embed cultural and linguistic responsive treatment, 监督, 和培训.”
Calvo and 羊皮纸 note that the ISI’s value will endure well beyond the immediate crisis. The initiative’s ultimate goal is to develop foundational interventions for improving Black and Latinx children’s mental health in the school setting.
“We are developing a full research agenda with this research question in mind,卡尔沃说.
BCSSW Dean Gautam Yadama expressed enthusiasm for the ISI. “我们与英伦石油公司的合作, combined with innovative 监督 pathways to strengthen the provision of linguistic and culturally competent mental health services to Black and Latinx children and families in the BPS system, 是否大胆且具有开创性.”
Sean Smith | University Communications | May 2022