By Selena Stevens

"We are thrilled to be involved in such an important collaborative effort to improve the lives of children in the South and the United States."

-- Chris Groeber, director of the UK Training Resource Center for Healthy Families.

Oct. 18, 2001 (Lexington, Ky.) -- The University of Kentucky Training Resource Center in the College of Social Work has been awarded $2.5 million from the federal Cabinet for Health and Human Services to create a new center to help improve child protective services in the rural southern United States.

The Quality Improvement Center would create partnerships between child protection agencies and universities in 10 states - Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and West Virginia - to support and evaluate innovative projects improving child protective services. Each year, the center will grant up to $500,000 to support innovative child protection programs.

The center will collect data on child protective services in the rural South to help evaluate programs and proposals and provide support for program improvement and development. The UK Training Resource Center will lead the initiative by providing technical and mentoring assistance and staff for the new center.

"We are thrilled to be involved in such an important collaborative effort to improve the lives of children in the South and the United States," said Chris Groeber, director of the UK Training Resource Center for Healthy Families.

The Quality Improvement Center will be guided by an advisory board comprised of a mixture of public child welfare administrators, university faculty, parents and community partners from each state. The grant from the Cabinet for Health and Human Services will be administered over five years. .