Assistant Professor Marina Lalayants and Professor Diane DePanfilis of Silberman’s National Center for Child Welfare Excellence have been awarded a three-year grant from the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children, Youth and Families to evaluate an intervention designed to support family connections and improve outcomes for children who are in foster care or at risk of entering foster care. The Enhanced Family Conferencing Initiative supports a model of practice in which critical decisions and service planning are made by a group including family members, their community supports and service providers rather than individually. The model will be enhanced in this study by the addition of parent advocates as well as follow-up child safety conferences. The grant, which involves a partnership with the New York City Administration for Children’s Services, the Kempe Center at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, and the Center for Human Development and Family Services, will support a robust experimental design to assess the impact of the model in a culturally diverse urban child welfare setting.
One great thing about SSW is becoming part of a community with some brilliant, compassionate social workers. I built a network of people that I can still call upon for career advice, emotional support, and resources for my clients.