By Adam Hinton
U.S. Rep. Anne Northup and acting U of L President James Ramsey announced a new initiative that will aid in improving the welfare of neglected and abused children across the nation.
At 11 am last Tuesday, the founding of the National Resource Center on Child Welfare Training and Evaluation at U of L was announced at a press conference at the South Jefferson Neighborhood Place. The Center’s primary responsibility will be to aid states, public child welfare agencies, tribes, and other private organizations to evaluate the training of child welfare workers. This evaluation comes as part of federal legislation intended to protect children in the child welfare program.
The Center, which cannot be officially established until approved by the Board of Trustee’s, will be receiving $250,000 in seed money from a congressional appropriation. Sponsored by Rep. Northup, the appropriation comes from the Children’s Bureau of the Administration on Children and Families in the Department of Health and Human Services.
Anita Barbee, an associate research professor at U of L’s Kent School of Social Work, will be the director of the new center. She said that the center will help states to communicate with one another on ways to improve the lives of neglected children and to ensure that the state and federal training dollars, our tax dollars, are spent wisely.
As child welfare workers investigate nearly 3 million allegations of neglect and abuse every year, the need for proper training is obvious. The new center hopes to improve this training, not only in Kentucky, but nationwide.
One of only a few states conducting research in this area, researchers at the Kent School have been involved in the field since 1992. Because of this exceptional record, U of L evaluators have already been involved in working with various other states, including California, Virginia, Oklahoma, and the District of Columbia. This team of faculty and staff will build on their already substantial experience at the new center.
In their effort to evaluate which training methods work best, the center will offer information resources to both the state and private agencies, as well as providing technical support to promote better evaluation and improve worker performance and accountability.
