University of Kentucky College of Social Work
The University of Kentucky College of Social Work had approximately $3.7 million in external funding for FY 2004 and 2005 which supports a variety of research, education, and service programs. Housed within the College of Social Work, the Training Resource Center has 16 years of experience designing and implementing child welfare training, evaluation and service programs across the state of Kentucky, with 35 program staff and associated faculty supporting 15 programs, primarily in the area of child welfare. One of the current major projects is implementing the Southern Regional Quality Improvement Center on Child Protection, which subgranted research and demonstration projects in four states testing the impact of clinical supervision in frontline public child welfare on organizational culture, worker retention and practice, and outcomes for children and families. The TRC has implemented quality control and fiscal program accountability processes including reporting requirements and deliverables based on each unique project’s objectives. Other programs include foster/adoptive parent support and training, independent living programs for foster youth, facilitating citizen review panels for child protection, a support program for TANF recipients enrolled at the university, and a faith-based mentoring program for children with imprisoned parents.
Faculty research and evaluation are integral parts of the college’s mission, and publication based on original research and on the findings of evaluation studies is expected. Recently, for example, faculty conducted the Kentucky Court Improvement Program Reassessment, and they are evaluating community-based prevention programs and a parenting program for imprisoned fathers (funded through the Children’s Bureau). Current research projects are in the areas of children’s mental health, drug and alcohol misuse, school mobility, work and family issues, welfare reform, and gender-related violence.
The UK Training Resource Center prides itself in building and engaging in collaborative and often multidisciplinary efforts. It is a member of a 11-university collaborative that works to educate child protective services staff and both graduate and undergraduate students in the area of child welfare. Collaborative activities include such things as interactive televised social work courses that prepare students to work in child protection.
Pal-Tech
Established in 1987, and located minutes from HHS Central Offices, Planning and Learning Technologies, Inc. (Pal-Tech) is an innovative, award-winning corporation committed to providing expert services with the highest levels of customer satisfaction and ethical behavior. We have been honored with the:
The following demonstrates our ability to manage multi-year projects with multiple components.
Currently, Pal-Tech is leading The National Evaluation of the Court Improvement Program (CIP) in partnership with the Urban Institute and the Center for Policy Research. The five-year outcome and descriptive study of reforms undertaken by dependency courts that oversee foster care and adoption cases, is being conducted for the Children’s Bureau. The study is synthesizing information on reforms employed by state courts across the country, as well as evaluation findings of family court reforms. In-depth data analysis is occurring within three study sites (Connecticut, Texas, and Delaware). Information is being collected and extracted from a number of sources (management information systems, case records, observations of court proceedings, and individual and group interviews). A technical work group of leading researchers and experts has been assembled to provide input at key points during the project.
Pal-Tech has a long history of planning and facilitating the National Conferences on Child Abuse and Neglect for the Children’s Bureau. These conferences bring together thousands of national and local experts in the field to share their strategies and ideas for protecting children and supporting families and communities. We serve as the National Head Start Training and Technical Assistance Resource Center for the Head Start Bureau.
QIC PCW Study Team and Staff
Crystal Collins-Camargo, MSW CSW Ph.D.
University of Kentucky
Crystal Collins-Camargo is a clinical assistant professor at the University of Kentucky College of Social Work, teaching master’s level courses in child welfare, supervision and ethics. She serves as Associate Director for Research and Educational Outreach at the College’s Training Resource Center, which is engaged in a variety of grant-funded research, education and service projects many of which serve the Kentucky public child welfare system.
Dr. Collins-Camargo is Director of the National Quality Improvement Center on the Privatization of Child Welfare Services, a knowledge development initiative that will involve multi-site research and demonstration projects assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of provision of child welfare services by private organizations, and the nature of the public/private partnership required in such an approach.
Since 2001, she has directed the Southern Regional Quality Improvement Center for Child Protection (SR QIC), funded by the Children’s Bureau, which is a knowledge development initiative involving the funding and cross-site evaluation of four research and demonstration projects within a ten-state region. Research conducted by the SR QIC focuses on the impact of clinical supervision on agency and client outcomes in public child welfare as well as the forging of public agency/university partnerships through a learning laboratory approach. This role has involved the management of a region-wide knowledge gap assessment, the funding and subgranting process, provision of technical assistance, conducting the cross-site evaluation, coordinating dissemination activities and facilitating a collaborative learning network.
Prior to coming to academia, she was program director for Prevent Child Abuse Kentucky, and worked in the state’s public child protection system as a worker, supervisor and statewide specialist.
Karl Ensign, MPP
Planning and Learning Technologies, Inc.
Mr. Ensign directed The External Evaluation of the Kansas Child Welfare System, an ongoing assessment which helped guide and refine the state’s privatization of services. The evaluation involved tracking contractor performance and caseload trends, supplemented with qualitative information gathered through extensive yearly on-site visits to the central state office as well as each of the 11 area offices and private providers of family preservation, foster care and adoption services within each of the state’s five regions. Mr. Ensign also assisted the state comply with their out-of-court settlement with the American Civil Liberties Union. Clients, users and providers of service were asked about the availability, quality and timeliness of services; client outcomes; inclusivity and relevance of the planning process; and client transitions from one service area to another (for instance, from foster care to adoption). As a result of the four-year project, monitoring was discontinued in 2001 as the ACLU agreed that the state had largely met established goals with respect to program improvement.
Mr. Ensign also directed the National Evaluation of the Family Preservation and Family Support (FP/FS) Services Implementation Study, and the Implementation of the Promoting Safe and Stable Families Program by Indian Tribes. Both were multi-year efforts carried out for HHS. Both projects included sites that had privatized their child welfare delivery system (e.g., the State of Florida and the Sioux Tribe). Information was obtained through document review and in-depth on-site discussions with numerous stakeholders. Results were synthesized in a series of issue papers, reports and verbal presentations.
Prior to joining the private sector, Mr. Ensign was responsible for child welfare research, policy development, analysis and planning within the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE, HHS). During this time, he fulfilled a detail to the U.S. Senate Finance Committee where he conducted background research for Senate Bill 4, the Child Welfare and Preventive Services Act, introduced by Senator Lloyd M. Bentsen. Although the Act did not successfully pass, it was widely recognized as the precursor to the 1993 FP/FS Act which Mr. Ensign also staffed from HHS. The Act continues to provide needed funding for child abuse prevention to community based organizations and child welfare agencies.
Jennifer Hall, MSW
University of Kentucky
Jennifer Hall is the Project Manager for the National Quality Improvement Center on the Privatization of Child Welfare Services. Twelve years ago, she began her career in social work as a frontline child protection services worker. She has gained knowledge in family reunification, adolescent issues, foster care, adoption, and recruitment and certification of foster and adoptive homes from the public child welfare worker and administrator viewpoint.
Ms. Hall joined the University of Kentucky Training Resource Center in 2002 where she directs programs related to training and support of the Cabinet for Health and Family Services’ (CHFS) foster and adoptive parents. She works in partnership with CHFS workers, supervisors and administrators and the University Training Consortium in order to meet the professional development needs of staff and foster and adoptive parents. This consortium is made up of eight universities which provide training, professional development, program support, administration and staffing for the CHFS.
She also teaches two child welfare course for students who are participants in Kentucky’s public child welfare certification program (PCWCP), a program designed to support the recruitment and retention of child welfare workers and prepare BSW students for public child welfare work. This certification program is a creative partnership between the Cabinet for Health and Family Services and eleven public & private universities with an accredited social work program and serves as a national model for improved child welfare services.
Teri A. Garstka, Ph.D.
Planning and Learning Technologies, Inc.
Dr. Teri A. Garstka received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology with a Quantitative Minor in 1997 at the University of Kansas. She has experience conducting process and outcome evaluations in the health and human services field, as well as providing evaluation-related technical assistance. Dr. Garstka has over 10 years of professional project management experience, working with large multi-study federally funded grants in the social sciences. Additionally, she has coordinated all research activities of large multi-study research programs, including coordinating over 15 independent experimental projects, collaborating with PI on study designs and materials, incorporating new software applications and technology, performing extensive data analyses, publishing over 14 peer-reviewed articles, and presenting results to national and international research communities.
As a Senior Research Associate at Planning and Learning Technologies, Dr. Garstka responds to requests for proposals and capability statements to evaluate child welfare and related programs, and to provide technical assistance in evaluation for pilot demonstration programs and special initiatives. Dr. Garstka conducts all aspects of evaluation including developing evaluation frameworks and designing evaluation strategies, collecting data and information to determine intervention effectiveness, analyzing the information collected, and drafting final reports and deliverables.
Elizabeth A.S. Lee, MA
Planning and Learning Technologies, Inc.
Ms. Lee has over 15 years experience conducting program evaluations in a variety of human service fields. She has conducted research in the areas of child welfare, Head Start and Early Head Start, and children’s health including oral and mental health services. Ms. Lee evaluated privatized child welfare services in the states of Kansas and Florida.
In Kansas, she helped to design and conduct a study that assessed the extent to which child welfare-involved families were able to access services external to the child welfare system. The study examined two populations and their access to different services. Specifically the study assessed (1) whether parents identified as abusing substances were both referred to treatment and participated in treatment, and (2) whether children identified with mental health needs were referred to and participated in mental health services.
For five years, Ms. Lee also worked on the federal Family Preservation and Family Support Implementation Study that involved 10 states. One of these was Florida which was privatizing services. She assessed the ability of both the public and private sectors to implement a range of child welfare services, including reunification and adoption services, in a changing services delivery structure.
Brian Yoder, Ph.D.
Planning and Learning Technologies, Inc.
Brian L. Yoder recently received his doctorate in Social and Comparative Analysis in Education from the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Education. He has several years of program evaluation experience as the internal evaluator for the federally-funded Preparing Tomorrows Teachers to Use Technology (PT3) project at the University of Pittsburgh. PT3 was a national program that worked to transform teacher education so that technology is integrated throughout teaching and learning in U.S. primary and secondary schools.
As a graduate student, Dr. Yoder received several awards for his research. He was awarded a grant from the National Science Foundation to conduct research for his dissertation in Beijing, China. Dr. Yoder is well versed in both qualitative and quantitative methods of social science research.
