Events

Photovoice for Change Art Gallery Showing on May 6, 2024

Through a collaboration between the NYU Silver School of Social Work and the Silberman School of Social Work, youth with experience in foster care showcased their photo art and accompanying descriptions in a Photovoice for Change event. This was a unique opportunity for youth to share their experiences with peers, change-makers, champions, academics and the larger community of those truly dedicated to their journeys.

The space was an empowering atmosphere filled with powerful conversations and connections centered on learning about the “Places and Spaces that have impacted their journeys”.  The event was based on a collaborative project co-lead by Associate Professor Colleen Cary Katz (Silberman) and Michelle Munson (NYU).

Professors Katz and Munson shared their appreciation for all involved in the event: “We so appreciate our funder for this project, The Kenworth-Swift foundation who provided support for the development of this trauma-informed program, our partners at Children’s Village, our leadership board, our youth advisory board, and of course our amazing photographers”.

Find out more by watching this YouTube Video and photos from the event here

Funding Awards

Funding Renewed for the Cabrini-Hunter Fellowships for Social Work

We are pleased to announce that the Mother Cabrini Health Foundation recently awarded a $1million dollar grant for the 2024-2025 academic year to the Cabrini-Hunter Fellowships for Social Work and Nursing Students at the Silberman School of Social Work. With Professor Gary Mallon as PI and Dr. Dunia Garcia as the Project Director, this marks the 4th grant award totaling $4 million dollars in funding since 2021.  

The Cabrini-Hunter Fellowships trains and prepares future healthcare professionals in interprofessional team-based practices. To date the Project has trained 90 graduate students, 45 MSW students and 45 Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing students.

To learn more visit the project website: https://www.cabrinihunterfellowships.org

Social Work Faculty Members Receive PSC-CUNY Enhanced Funding Awards

Assistant Professor Qi Chen and Associate Professor Alexis Jemal each received an Enhanced Cycle 55 PSC-CUNY Research Awards for $12,000. The enhanced funding, set for dissemination July 1st, 2024, was awarded to less than half (46%) of CUNY wide faculty who applied for them.

Awards & Recognitions

Associate Professor Jama Shelton authored a top ten cited paper in the Journal of Family Relations for 2022-2023.

• Shelton, J. & Fox, C.* (2024). Social work reckons with cisnormativity & the gender binary. The Routledge International Handbook of Feminisms in Social Work.
• Dr. Jama Shelton was announced as a recipient of the Outstanding LGBTQ Scholar Advocate Award at the 2024 LGBTQ Research Symposium. The committee chose Dr. Shelton based on what they reported as highly impressive work done by them in the LGBTQ community and how their scholarship, community work, and advocacy align to promote equity and justice for queer and trans people. Dr. Shelton will be honored at a Keynote Presentation and Awards Ceremony on June 7th, 2024.

National Conferences

Professor Diane DePanfilis presented lessons learned at the Human Services Workforce Development Evaluation Symposium at UCLA on May 1st, 2024, based on her collaboration with Ten NYC Administration for Children’s Services (ACS) funded Prevention Programs in NYC (five in the Bronx, two in East Harlem, and three in Brooklyn).

Click here to view the slides and handouts

Invited Talk

International Conferences / Convenings

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Professor Martha S. Bragin represented the International Association of Schools of Social Work at the Annual Meeting of the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action held in Panama City June 4-6. Dr. Bragin led a discussion on the importance of Participatory Methods in the Assessment, Design, Monitoring and Evaluation of emergency interventions. She was supported by Heleen Bennet, a FEMA sponsored OYR student. 

Assistant Professor Anna Ortega-Williams was the Keynote Speaker at the Canadian Association for Social Work Education on June 18, 2024 in Montreal, Canada. Dr. Ortega-Williams opened the conference with her invited talk, Catalyzing Healed Futures: Recasting the Web of Sustainability.

International Conference: Peer Support and Experiential Knowledge was was held at Lund University, Sweden,

in May 2024

Professor Marina Lalayants presented at the international conference on Peer Support and Experiential Knowledge that was held at Lund University, Sweden, in May. The aim of the conference was to promote awareness and share knowledge on uses of lived experience from service users, practitioners, educators, and researchers in the development and improvement of health- and social work practice, education, and research. Together with her colleague Professor Jeri Damman from the University of Sussex, UK, Dr. Lalayants presented a workshop on “Exploring the evidence-base and future possibilities for embedding experiential knowledge in child protection.”

experiential knowledge in child protection.” This workshop provided an expansive and in-depth exploration of parent advocacy from conceptualization to outcome achievement, inviting participants to reflect together on the personal, interpersonal, and structural conditions needed for embedding parents’ experiential knowledge in child protection.

Assistant Professor Laura Graham Holmes attended the National Prevention Suicide Conference held at the Adelaide Convention Centre in Australia from Tuesday 30 April to Thursday 2 May, 2024. Dr. Graham Holmes presented at three sessions:

1. Early Career Rapid Research Rounds
2. “Supporting Sexual Wellbeing in Autistic Adults: Healing from Trauma, Navigating Consent, and Seeking Pleasure.”
3. “Exploring Mental Health and Healthcare Experiences of Autistic Gender Minorities.”

Associate Professor Geetha Gopalan presented two peer reviewed papers at the 13th European Conference for Social Work Research in Lithuania, April 2024.

Recent Notable Publications

Brief Abstract:

Violence among people with intimate and family relationships continues to be a pervasive and costly social problem in the United States. Consistent with the CDC’s Connecting-the-Dots Framework, our Grand Challenge adopts a holistic and developmental perspective that acknowledges the importance of developing, implementing, and scaling prevention and intervention programs that address micro, meso, and macro risk and protective factors comprehensively, while also appreciating that efforts to address root causes of violence have been located primarily at the individual and interpersonal levels. While this special issue has contributed to the knowledge base on healthy relationship, we hope the research in this issue will spark further inquiry into healthy relationships as a key element in reducing or preventing violence, expanded conceptual models that call out adverse structural factors contributing to violence, identification of more relational risk and protective factors that help explain violence, and the development and further refinement of interventions that build healthy relationships.  

Author Abstract:

This study investigated the experiences of providers collaborating with child welfare workers using the Quality of Collaboration with Child Welfare (Q-CCW) survey. The findings reveal a significant misalignment between the perceived importance of collaboration and providers’ actual satisfaction levels. Despite high valuations of collaboration, participants from a range of professions expressed dissatisfaction with the responsivity and professionalism of workers. They were slightly more satisfied with relational elements of the collaborations. Participants further indicated that their experiences led to poorer outcomes and decreased willingness to continue working on child welfare cases. Providers’ responses underscores the need for improvements in collaborative practices.

Author Abstract:

Public health education and adapting formal treatments are critical for optimal success with older adults who engage in harmful use of substances. Varied modalities, formats, topics and settings are required for maximum impact.

Author Abstract:

A frequent question in discussions about democracy is whether input from the public is ever considered and to what extent by politicians. This influence of public opinion on the realm of welfare policies has not been extensively explored, and most analyses are less precise for being conducted before the passage of the national welfare reform in 1996, better known as the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA). Bringing the analysis to a period after the reform to account for contextual changes since its passage, this study uses the multilevel and poststratification (MRP) model considered superior in analysis of subnational opinion using national survey data to assess the influence of public opinion on welfare policies at the state level. Collecting data from the 2014 CCES and a new developed welfare generosity index, I find that public opinion does not have any influence on how generous welfare programs turn out in their states, unless it is interacted with state government ideology. It seems that the ideology of the state government and the state poverty rate are the major determinants on welfare policies outcomes in the states, although the latter had different effects for TANF and SNAP.