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faculty's strengths

Family & Child Welfare, Family Violence, & Family-Centered Practice 

As the School’s mission statement reflects, the use of family-centered and community-based practice approaches is central to the School’s curriculum which prepares culturally competent social work scholars and practitioners with a commitment to social justice and social work values and ethics. The application of these theories and practice approaches to the development, implementation and evaluation of social welfare policy and practice with vulnerable populations, including children and their families, is a focal point for curriculum, faculty research and the activities of The National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice (NRCFCP). The NRCFCP is a project of the School with a mission of promoting family-centered, culturally responsive practice across human service systems through research and evaluation, training and technical assistance, and information dissemination.

 

The National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice has had a home at the University of Iowa for more than twenty-five years. Beginning as a small training project funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, the Center was one of the first organizations in the country to promote home-based, family centered services- later known as "family preservation." Over the years its scope has expanded to many different service systems and to provide a range of services including training and technical assistance, research and evaluation, and information dissemination – throughout the U.S., in several U.S. Protectorates, and through collaborations in Europe, Asia, North, Central and South America, and Australia.

 

The NRCFCP also coordinates collaborations between the School of Social Work and public child welfare services in Iowa through the Iowa Child Welfare Research Partnership, a group composed of representatives of the Iowa Department of Human Services and faculty and professional staff of Iowa’s two public universities with accredited schools of social work. The goal of the ICWRP iis to improve child welfare practice and outcomes by strengthening research collaboration between participating organizations.

 

 

why iowa?

quoteAt Iowa, I have been involved in several community and State projects, including the Domestic Violence Intervention Program, the Women’s Resource and Action Center, and the University Child Welfare Agency Partnership. These practice experiences have enriched my research, my teaching and my life."

 

- Carol Coohey, PhD
Associate Professor

 

quoteI wandered into Iowa from the East Coast, where I grew up and spent my early working years, and never found a good enough reason to leave. After earning my MSW I was drawn to the National Clearinghouse for Home Based Services, a small child welfare project at UI that was spearheading a national movement to infuse family centered principles into traditional child welfare services. My long standing affiliation with this project, now the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice, has provided me with unique opportunities to implement and evaluate child welfare policy and practice on a national and state level. While working as a macro-practitioner with the Center, I received my Ph.D. in Sociology at UI, specializing in social stratification and quantitative research.

 

I am involved with several exciting research projects that combine the Center’s work in building the capacity of child welfare workers to support families with a parallel capacity for child welfare organizations to support their employees. I also have a professional interest in social work’s role in the coercive functions of the state, and in how social work values, ethics, knowledge and skills can be applied to counter the current policy climate that is increasingly hostile to vulnerable children and families."


- Miriam Landsman, PhD
Assistant Professor and Executive Director of NRCFCP