Newswise — A multimillion dollar contract, the largest single contract that MTSU has ever been granted, should make a big difference in helping Tennessee's most needy children, according to someone who should know.
MTSU has been awarded a $16 million contract to oversee a 13-member university consortium effort to provide training for the State of Tennessee 's Department of Children's Services (DCS) for the next five years beginning Oct. 1.
Alesha Gresham, an MTSU graduate, who interned with DCS in the summer of 2003, grew up in a home where there were drug and alcohol issues and abuse. Gresham, who is employed at the Exchange Club Family Center, and her husband recently took in her brother's daughter, who was born with cocaine in her system. Gresham says she hopes this will become a permanent living situation for her niece. Gresham has seen the problem from every angle and knows firsthand the importance of having an effective and responsive support system.
"People don't hear the positive things that can happen as a result of DCS involvement," she said. "The system is certainly overworked and understaffed, but DCS can be improved by creating more avenues of communication with community agencies and resources. And more training is needed in how to approach families. They need to be approached with a helping attitude instead of a law enforcement attitude."
Dr. Viola P. Miller, new commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, will visit the MTSU campus on Oct. 7 at 10:45 for the formal announcement in the University's Alumni Center. Gresham also will offer remarks at the event.
"Thorough and consistent training is essential in DCS's efforts to improve the lives and well-being of children in Tennessee," Miller said. "The development of the university consortium marks the implementation of desperately needed consistency in the training of our employees. We are thrilled about our partnership with MTSU and look forward to the growth and development of our staff through this program."
Miller will help kick off the recently founded Tennessee Child Welfare Training Center, which was created after MTSU was chosen to oversee DCS training for the next five years. MTSU, in a 9-2 vote, was selected to be the lead training university by members of the Tennessee Social Work Education Consortium (SWEC) during the consortium's April meeting. During the meeting, both UT and MTSU presented proposals in a bid to be the state's lead university in charge of overseeing the development and implementation of a revamped, statewide training program.
Dr. Stacey Borasky, assistant professor of social work at MTSU, has been named the executive director of the newly created Tennessee Child Welfare Training Center (TCWTC), which is guided by a 13-member consortium board composed of representatives from both public and private universities throughout Tennessee.
She said MTSU will now take the reins to provide training services for all of the state's DCS case managers, social workers and other personnel. The approach MTSU will bring to the training process is one that is based in social workâsomething that has not always been in place, she said.
"By using social work-focused training, we expect to strengthen our state's DCS staff and make them more effective in their fields," Borasky explained. "The social work profession emphasizes that everyone has value and everyone should be treated with dignity and respect. With this kind of skill base, one can walk into crisis situations, and determine what needs to be done for the child and family both quickly and effectively."
Everyone in Tennessee benefits when services are improved, and the newly awarded training contract, which is renewable annually for five years, will make an impact, she adds.
"When kids and families get high-quality services (from DCS), it reduces incidents of violence, including domestic abuse, and creates healthier homes, which benefits all of us," she explained.
As executive director of TCWTC, Borasky said it is her immediate goal to engage the members of the 13-school TSWEC in helping her transition DCS's current training procedures to the soon-to-be implemented training programs that have social work as their emphasis. Borasky said that another change in the current training services will be the implementation of regional training sites.
"In the past, DCS personnel had to travel to get the needed training, but we're hoping that by creating regional training sites at all of the universities that are in the 13-member consortium, we can fix it so that there won't have to be overnight stays away from home just to get training," remarked Borasky, who reports that the MTSU-initiated training services will begin Jan. 1, 2005.
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