Research from SSW Faculty at Centers, Institutes, & External Partnerships
Exploring International Partnerships
Director, Center for International Social Work Studies
Rebecca Thomas, associate professor of policy practice and director of the Center for International Social Work Studies, coordinates a joint academic program exchange between UConn and Yerevan State University in Armenia. For the past five years, Thomas has taken SSW students to Armenia to conduct research on issues related to international development, poverty, and migration, as well as the role social work can play in helping refugees achieve economic and social security. “We’ve been focusing on Syrian refugees of Armenian descent who have been moving back to Armenia as a result of the war in Syria,” says Thomas. She explores the reverse migration in her article “Returning Home: the Experiences of Resettlement for Syrian-Armenian Refugees into Armenia” in the Journal of International Migration and Integration.
Among other projects, Thomas also recently co-authored with Professor Emeritus and Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor Lynne M. Healy “International Social Work: Professional Action in an Interdependent World,” (3rd Edition), forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
Expanding Voter Participation to Improve Community Well-being
Instructor in Residence and Director, Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work
“Communities that vote have higher rates of education, they report higher rates of health and well being, and they also have higher earnings,” says Tanya Rhodes Smith, instructor in-residence at the School of Social Work and director of the Nancy A. Humphreys Institute for Political Social Work.
With help from a grant from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, the Humphreys Institute is providing support and resources to organizations that want to integrate voter registration, education, and outreach into their service delivery. It also is expanding its work with UConn students. “We are trying to build this really strong foundation and connection to social work practice that voting is an appropriate intervention, an ethical and effective intervention at all levels,” says Rhodes Smith.
Training Culturally Competent Practitioners to Work with Children with Disabilities
Associate Professor and Research Director, UConn Health University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities
Latinos are the fastest growing population in the United States, yet they have the lowest autism diagnosis rate. One reason for the discrepancy, says Cristina Wilson, associate professor in the School of Social Work and research director at the UConn Health University Center for Excellence in Developmental Disabilities, may be lack of access to culturally competent specialists who have the ability to use Spanish-language screening tools. Wilson recently received, as co-PI with Mary Bruder of UConn Health, two five-year grants from the U.S. Department of Education to train students at the MSW and Ph.D. levels to focus on children with disabilities, including autism spectrum disorder, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable populations.
“These grants will ensure that an interdisciplinary group of fully credentialed personnel will have the necessary skills and knowledge, including cultural competence, to be successful in serving high needs infants and young children and their families,” says Wilson.
Evaluating Family Drug Treatment Courts
Assistant Professor
The US in the midst of a major opioid drug addiction epidemic. Many drug involved people wind up in the criminal justice system. When parents are both drug involved and involved in the criminal justice system, it can have devastating consequences for their young children. One innovative model for addressing these consequences for children can be found in the Oklahoma Family Drug Treatment Court in Oklahoma City. This model seeks to strengthen families encountering addiction who wind up in the court system. Margaret Lloyd is conducting groundbreaking research on this important innovation, looking at 3 interventions designed to enhance parent-child bonding in families where an adult parent has been identified by the courts as substance involved. In this SAMHSA funded evaluation, Dr. Lloyd will compare families involved in the drug court to families with parental substance use disorders in the general child welfare system.
“This project is particularly important because we are focusing services on families with children under age 5", says Dr. Lloyd. "Infants and young children affected by parental substance use disorders are the fastest growing group of children in foster care—a scary reality given that the developmental importance of parent-child attachment during this time frame. The outcomes have looked very good in earlier evaluations of these courts. With this study, we are hoping to continue building knowledge and improving their effectiveness and impact.”
The Role of Self-Stigma on Engagement in Opioid Use Disorder Treatment
Associate Research Professor
Associate Research Professor Hsiu-Ju Lin is working on several federally funded projects related to the opioid crisis. She is a co-investigator on a Nation Institute of Drug Abuse funded Diversity Supplement study for TCN-PATHs. TCN (Transitional Clinical Network) is a program that embeds formerly incarcerated community health workers within primary care teams to address the social determinants of OUD, provide social support, help patients build trust in the health system, and advocate in interactions with the criminal justice system. This supplemental study aims to fill in a key knowledge gap on how self-stigma affects TCN participants and their level of engagement in OUD treatment following release to the community.
Dr. Lin is also collaborating with Dr. William Becker and his team at Yale on a project which linked several CT state administrative databases to explore the role of prior exposure to FDA-regulated prescription drugs, criminal justice involvement, and substance abuse treatment in fatal and nonfatal overdoses. “Many state agencies collected opioid related data, however, analyzing and interpreting these datasets alone is similar to the parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant. Each one is limited and very likely to reach a different and biased conclusion about the opioids crisis” Lin said. This data linkage project has identified over 60% of fatal overdose cases from 2012 to 2018 that have a history of opioid drug prescription, however, less than 30% of them have ever received medication assisted treatment.
Research & Scholarship from SSW Faculty
Addressing Problem Drinking Among Young Adults
Professor and Associate Dean for Research
Supported by $725,000 National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism grant, Michael Fendrich, professor and associate dean for research, has teamed up with Crystal Park, professor of psychology, and Beth Russell, associate professor of human development and family sciences, to develop interventions to address escalating drinking patterns among young adults. Most alcohol prevention-interventions with young adults have focused on peer influences. Fendrich says he and his colleagues are taking their research in a new direction: “We’re thinking a lot of problematic drinking may be a function more of how people handle stress.” During the three-year study conducted at UConn, they aim to develop and evaluate skills people can use to cope with distressing emotions without relying on alcohol. “We’re excited about a promising new approach to an issue that has been fairly intractable,” says Fendrich
Exploring Unconscious Racism Through Film
Associate Professor
In a new paper entitled “Psychodynamic Analysis of Racialized Interactions: The Get Out Case Study,” Dr. Ann Marie-Garran and co-author Dr. Brian Rasmussen use the Academy Award-nominated film Get Out as a case study to explore themes related to race relations and the unconscious dynamics of racism that can impact therapeutic services.
The authors use Get Out’s position as a creative piece to reveal aspects of human experience, and race relations in particular, that are difficult to capture through contemporary scientific methods and standards of evidence. While most case studies used in clinical reports are private, offering only the clinician’s report, analyzing film allows for the application of psychoanalytic concepts to recurrent themes in the film that, the authors posit, are the result of the creators’ imagination and lived experiences intermingling.
Get Out conveys perceptions, anxieties, and fears between the races, with overtures that hold relevance for clinical practice. Moving beyond the notion of cultural competency, the authors discuss race relations through concepts of consciousness, double-consciousness, projection, and more. The authors consider these ideas with respect to mixed racial therapeutic dyads, clinical supervision, and white dominated agencies, noting that it is of utmost important for white clinicians to fully grasp the intensity of these dynamics in order to confront institutional bias and analyze their work for vestiges of white supremacy and internalized racial superiority to minimize their occurrence.
Examining The Role of Macro-Level Factors in Child Neglect
Assistant Professor
Traditional child maltreatment prevention strategies have focused on the prevention of physical and sexual abuse but have been less effective at preventing child neglect – the most common type of child maltreatment reported to Child Protective Service agencies in the US. In a new paper, “Heed Neglect, Disrupt Child Maltreatment: A Call to Action for Researchers” published in the International Journal on Child Maltreatment: Research, Policy and Practice, Dr. Megan Feely and co-authors propose expanding the focus of research on neglect from individual and family-level factors to include macro-level factors, as they play an underexplored role in family circumstances and influence parents’ ability to provide safe environments for children.
The authors speak to the challenges in reducing neglect, which appears to be the result of complex and unidentified interactions that existing health and social service systems do not effectively prevent, perhaps in part because society has traditionally viewed neglect as a problem within the family unit. They argue that research has reinforced this by focusing on micro-level interventions. However, emerging research in the area of child neglect supports the notion that policy changes that effect a family’s macroenvironment may be key in preventing neglect. The authors note that the field needs more research, but they argue that the consideration of macro-level factors should be concurrent with strengthening families and communities.
Broadening our Understanding of Grief
Professor
Professor Alex Gitterman recently co-authored two articles that expand understanding of grief and how social work can help people deal with it. “Grieving for the Loss of Place, its Familiarities and the Accompanying Associations and for the Loss of Precious Time and Associated Opportunities” appeared in Families and Society.
“The literature on grieving mostly focuses on loss of loved ones,” says Gitterman. “We suggest that it’s a much broader concept. Losing home, becoming uprooted through natural disasters, losing time to drug addiction — there is mourning for that too.” Published in Clinical Social Work Journal, “Ambiguous and Disenfranchised Grief: An Overlooked but Critical Need for Social Work Intervention,” examines grief when a loved one is alive but no longer present, such as with an Alzheimer’s patient.
Improving Outcomes for Young Adults
Assistant Professor
Assistant Professor Nate Okpych studies older youth in foster care. As program director for the longitudinal CalYOUTH Study, he evaluates California state law AB 12, which in 2012 extended the age limit for foster care from 18 to 21. The study tracks 727 young people who were in foster care at age 17, interviewing them every two years through age 23. A forthcoming report assesses the impact that extended foster care has on a wide range of youth outcomes.
Okpych is also involved in two studies that involve college students who participate in campus-based support programs (CSPs) for foster youth. “There are currently over 200 CSPs in colleges across the nation, and these programs are targeted programs that address the needs and realities of students with foster care experience.” The first study examines social network formation and the transition to college among students participating in a CSP at Western Michigan University. The second study is based in California and explores the ways students and CSPs have adapted during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Partnering with a colleague at the University of Illinois, Okpych is completing an analysis of national data collected by the National Youth and Transition Database (NYTD), which evaluates individual characteristics and state policies that affect foster youths’ connectedness to education and employment in early adulthood. Finally, Okpych’s book Climbing a Broken Ladder (January 2021, Rutgers University Press) analyses data of a 10-year study of over 700 foster youth in three Midwestern states. Climbing provides data-driven and practice- and policy-relevant recommendations for improving foster youths’ college enrollment, persistence, and completion.
More on Current Research at the School of Social Work
Want to know more about current research activities and funding at the UConn School of Social Work? The Office of Research and Scholarship (ORS) provides regular updates below.
UConn SSW at SSWR 2021
Society for Social Work Research 25th Annual Conference | January 19-22, 2021 | Virtual
Topic: Social Work Science for Change
The following is a list of UConn School of Social Work faculty, PhD candidates/students, MSW students, BSW students, and researchers who are presenting at the 25th Annual Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) Conference in January 2021. Non-UConn School of Social Work co-presenters have been omitted.
Please visit the conference website for more information.
Tuesday, January 18, 2020
Impact of the Trump Administration's Immigration Policy on University Faculty
Cindy Dubuque-Gallo (presenting author) & Michael Fendrich
Elizabeth Jurczak (presenting author) & Jon Phillips
Wednesday, January 20, 2021
The Impact of Structural Disadvantage on Child Protective Service Involvement and Recurrence
Patricia Carlson (presenting author), Megan Feely, Brenda Kurz, Emily Loveland, & Joshua Pierce
Associations of Substance Use with Non-Adherence to COVID-19 Public Health Guidelines in a US Sample
Michael Fendrich (presenting author) & Jessica M. Becker
Resettlement Policies and Experiences of Refugees: Role of Refugee Services and Workers
Kathryn Libal (moderator)
Nathanael Okpych
Youth Characteristics and Predominant Placement Type between Age 18 and 21
Nathanael Okpych
Jon Phillips (presenting author) & Elizabeth Jurczak
Jenna Powers (presenting author) & Nathanael Okpych
Thursday, January 21, 2021
Joanne Corbin (discussant)
Margaret Lloyd (presenting author)
Nathanael Okpych
Friday, January 22, 2021
Megan Feely (presenting author)
Connection Not Consequences: Parent Perspectives on Compliance in Family Treatment Court
Robert Haswell (presenting author) & Margaret Lloyd
Gio Iacono (presenting author)
Gio Iacono
ORS Events – Spring 2021
Brown Bag Series
Scott Harding | UConn SSW
Thursday, March 4th 2021 / 12:00-1:30pm / WebEx
Rebecca Thomas | UConn SSW
Wednesday, April 21st 2021 / 12:00-1:30 / WebEx
Other Events
Webinar: GIS for Social Work
Tom Felke | Florida Gulf Coast University
Friday, January 29th 2021 / 10:30-12:00 / WebEx
For more information and to register, click here.
Webinar: Internet Survey Pitfalls, Challenges, and Opportunities
Michael Fendrich | UConn SSW & Doug Bradway | UConn IRB
Monday, February 22nd 2021 / 12:00-1:00 / WebEx
More information TBA.
Webinar: NIH Funding for Social Work
Margarita Alegria | Harvard Medical School
Wednesday, March 17 2021 / TBD / WebEx
More information TBA.
For more information, please contact Lindsay Wessell at Lindsay.Wessell@uconn.edu.
ORS Alert – Archive
The ORS Alert is a monthly digest that highlights recent grant awards and publications from UConn School of Social Work faculty and students. The Alert also provides information on funding, professional development opportunities, and upcoming events relevant to research and scholarship in the field of Social Work. Below are archived Alerts in chronological order.