The Lumberjack



Students Serving The Cal Poly Humboldt Campus and Community Since 1929

Tag: Social Work

  • New Grant Lends Helping Hand

    New Grant Lends Helping Hand

    Mental health grant seeks to address adverse childhood experiences in Humboldt

    A new $5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education will be placing Masters of Social Work students at Humboldt State University in Eureka City Schools and Del Norte County schools as stipend workers.

    “The grants themselves are funding positions at Eureka City Schools and also the Del Norte Unified School District,” Director of Field Education at HSU’s Department of Social Work Yvonne Doble said. “It’s actually a full time benefited position that’s being brought on at the school side to support our students.”

    Announced Nov. 20, the funds will come from the U.S. Department of Education Mental Health Service Professional Development Program.

    Nearly $1 million of the grant will be going to Humboldt State to help support the students and get them prepared for applying for the Pupil Personnel Services Credential, which is necessary for social work students to be hired by schools.

    “A large portion of that is coming specifically for the stipends for the students,” Doble said. “We plan to offer a class for stipend recipients, where they will receive faculty guidance and support regarding school social work practice.”

    The grant will be placing Masters of Social Work students at HSU in varying levels of schools throughout Del Norte and Humboldt Counties.

    “It looks like we are going to have eight students this next fall, maybe more, and that will move up to 13 to 15 students by year four of the grant,” Doble said.

    Locally, students face higher than normal rates of Adverse Childhood Experiences in Humboldt and Del Norte.

    “Our region, for a number of reasons, has California’s highest ACEs rates in Humboldt and Del Norte County,” Jack Bareilles, the Northern Humboldt Union High School District grants administrator and an author of the grant, said. “You’re looking at approximately a third of all kids are being raised in families with four or more of the ten ACEs. So there is just a real need for that here, and I believe that’s one of the reasons we got funded.”

    • A graph taken from the HSU California Center for Rural Policy Sept. 2017 report on adverse childhood experiences.

    ACEs can include things like alcohol and drug use or violence in the home, housing insecurity and food insecurity.

    “Locally, there is a real need for support for students and support for families,” Bareilles said. “Social workers are uniquely qualified to provide, and that being said, we actually have a real shortage of social workers in the schools. It’s just something that we haven’t had before.”

    Bareilles said the shortage comes from the lack of PPS credentials for students, and also because social workers, which are different from counselors and school psychiatrists, are mainly used in larger cities. Now, the PPS credential will be offered at HSU.

    “Kids and schools and families will be helped, and when push comes to shove, that is the most important thing.”

    Jack Bareilles

    “The role of school social workers is to really help address social and emotional needs of our students,” Doble said. “It’s not just about academic counseling. It’s about providing resources to children and families. It’s about providing opportunities to developers, opportunities to repair harm that’s occurred.”

    Bareilles said doing social work in school systems differs greatly from social work in other categories because the public schools operate under different processes than normal organizations.

    “Having these interns work two days a week for a whole year working in a high school or middle school or elementary school, they will emerge from their MSW program with a real sense of, ‘Oh this is how schools work,’” Bareilles said. “So whether or not they are employed as a school social worker or some other child-serving social worker, they will really have a better ability of connecting the dots and getting kids what they need.”

    Bareilles said the grant is a huge win for mental health support in Humboldt County and will help provide many troubled youths with the resources and personnel that they need.

    “Kids and schools and families will be helped, and when push comes to shove, that is the most important thing,” Bareilles said.

  • Online Social Work ranked best in the nation

    Online Social Work ranked best in the nation

    By | Charlotte Rutigliano

    The Online Social Work Bachelors program and the Master’s program have been ranked 13th and 12th by College Choice, an online source dedicated to helping students find the best schools for their academic and career goals.

    Alyssa Koh, managing editor from College Choice said that the team she works with often says that figuring out what college to attend can be like drinking from a fire hose.

    “We have all been through the process of researching, applying and choosing a school,” Koh said, “we really are coming at this from experience.”

    According to Koh, the ranking criterion is a question that they got a lot, and one that is very important to them and that they feel confident about.

    “Our methodology is always data-driven and as scientific as possible,” Koh said. “We collect data points from trustworthy sources.”

    Sources that include university and college websites, PayScale, U.S. News & World Report, and the National Center for Education Statistics Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS).

    Koh said that what they’ve done is come up with a way to measure quality, reputation, affordability, value, and satisfaction.

    “Going to college isn’t just books and tests,” Koh said, “it’s a whole host of factors, and we take that into account.”

    According to Koh, the methodology College Choice uses first looks at what students want, what they are looking for and what they can help them with. The data gathered is aggregated into different criteria that composite scores.

    “Most of our lists use three composite scores for determining the ranking,” Koh said, “institutional excellence, student satisfaction and return on investment.”

    Jamie Jensen, assistant professor and director of distributed learning programs for the online Bachelor’s and Master’s, said while she’s less concerned about the ranking of the programs, and that it feels good to see the department and the university out there.

    According to Jensen, the social work programs are generalist programs that teach students to work on issues, populations and system levels. The online Bachelor’s program is set up just like the on-campus program, and the online Master’s program is a part-time year round option that has a new cohort starting every January.

    “The Master’s program model is targeted at providing educational opportunities to those already living and working in rural or Indigenous Communities,” Jensen said.

    Geneva Shaw, lecturer and the Master of Social Work director, said that the online programs allow students who work full time, have families or are currently working in the field to stay rooted where they are and continue their education.

    According to Jensen, these online programs first got started because of an expressed need to bring a pathway to education for people in the surrounding rural and tribal communities who were already doing great work but didn’t have the privilege to attend the program on campus.

    “We graduated our first Bachelor’s in social work distributed learning (BASW DL) in 2013,” Jensen said, “and the first Master’s in social work distributed learned (MSW DL) in 2016.”

    Jensen said that as of May 2017 the program had graduated 68 new BASW and 38 new MSW into underserved rural areas of Northern California, as well as 54 students in both the BASW and MSW scattered across California, Idaho, Oregon, Washington state, Rhode Island and Alaska.

    Shaw said that though she’s also unsure of the ranking process, it gives acknowledgment to programs both on campus and online, and the connections made not only in our own community, but also in the students’ home communities.