The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources (DHHR) has awarded the Shepherd University Social Work Program a grant in the amount of $168,007 for the 2012-13 fiscal year. Co-principal investigators are Drs. Geri Crawley-Woods and Douglas C. Horner.

Funded through Title IV-E of the Social Security Act, this grant provides on-going training to staff and supervisors of DHHR throughout the 15-county region of eastern West Virginia. The training is provided in a number of areas including legal and ethical issues in child welfare, substance abuse, culturally sensitive practice, issues of separation experienced by children in foster care, trauma, engaging absent fathers and kinship care.

An additional training area is under the direction of Regional Child Welfare Trainer Amy Hampton, MSW. This initiative provides a series of workshops for potential foster/adoptive parents at several sites and is part of a statewide effort to increase the number of permanent family placements for the 3,000 children who are in care. Over the last several years, Hampton and her staff of trainers have prepared several hundred persons as potential foster/adoptive providers.

The Social Work Program, which began in 1972, is accredited until 2020 by the national professional standards body, the Council on Social Work Education, to offer the bachelor of social work degree. This community training component has been in operation since 1992 and has secured more than $2 million in outside funding to support this important mission of the University and the program.