The pilot project calls for eight county staff who work at tribal services or Del Norte’s Department of Health and Human Services to take two courses in Spring 2010 toward their bachelor of arts degrees. The initiative is designed to be a springboard for HSU’s Department of Social Work to offer online child welfare distance education on a permanent basis for associate, bachelor’s and master’s degrees.
The $100,600 grant, provided by the California Social Work Education Center (CalSWEC) at UC Berkeley, will cover the cost of offering the two Del Norte courses, plus tuition and related expenses. HSU, CSU Chico and CSU Bernardino will evaluate the project with the intention of continued programming and funding for the eight staff to complete their degrees.
Through CalSWEC and the state, Humboldt State is pursuing federal funding to cement its provision of distance education to remote Redwood Coast social work professionals. A course plan for both bachelor’s and master’s degrees would be a hybrid model of online, Web casting, video conferencing, in person and ITV technologies to meet child welfare staffing needs.
In preparation for the Del Norte project, HSU’s Department of Social Work joined last spring with CSU Chico and CSU Bernardino in a needs survey of child welfare agencies in remote geographic regions in their service areas. Staff in county and tribal health and human services agencies in Del Norte, Mendocino and Trinity Counties were canvassed for interest and learning preferences. The poll of tribal social service staff comprised the Hoopa Valley Tribe and Trinidad Rancheria in Humboldt County; four tribes in Del Norte County, Tolowa Nation, Smith River Rancheria, Resighini Rancheria and Yurok Tribe; and in Mendocino County, Round Valley Tribes.
“Humboldt County staff was not included in the survey, owing to its proximity to the campus, but there is clearly interest on their part as well,” said HSU Social Work Professor Pamela Brown, who is coordinator of the university’s Child Welfare Distance Education Project.
Brown and her colleagues met with the directors of social services of all the counties and tribes to gauge the need for degreed staff and their agencies’ capacity to support, hire and promote them. “Lastly,” said Brown, “we met with the two community colleges that serve this region, College of the Redwoods and Mendocino College, to determine their readiness for online or off-site course offerings and articulation agreements with HSU.”
Humboldt State is at work with CR to put the two social work pre-requisite courses online or offer them face-to-face at the college’s Del Norte campus.
Likewise, HSU is partnering with Mendocino College in its efforts to establish a Human Services Paraprofessional program and an articulation agreement with Humboldt State’s Department of Social Work.
A third prong of HSU’s effort is to work with CSU Chico on the potential for an inter-institutional bachelor of art degree program in social work. Chico has four bachelor of arts courses online, and “an efficient use of our resources would be for HSU to develop online courses Chico does not have,” Brown said. “That would enable a more collaborative model of service delivery, maximum use of resources and a mix of the strengths of the faculty’s expertise.”
Brown is near to concluding another funded study of staffing needs in public and tribal mental health services and community-based programs, in contract with county mental health agencies.
CalSWEC bills itself as the nation’s largest state coalition of social work educators and practitioners. Founded in 1990, it focuses on integrating university research with county services and with the development of graduate social work curriculum.