Responsive Scholarship - CHS Supports Effort to Break Stigma around Home Free Population
Over the last five years, Dr. Eva Moya, associate professor of Social Work, has built a successful service learning partnership with the El Paso Opportunity Center for the Homeless (the OC), a local agency that focuses on providing emergency and permanent housing options and support services for vulnerable populations.
Under Moya’s leadership, the department and OC created what they call a “Community of Learning and Practice” in which students in the Master of Social Work (MSW) program learn best practices in working with the home free population on site at the Center. Each year since its inception, MSW students have completed a macro practice course taught by Moya, with some students electing to complete their community intervention and Healthy People 2020 proposals at the OC - all in an effort to bring awareness about the great need for support and services for this population. Bridging the micro-macro divide in the form of community-engaged practice to address homelessness, social work education and health in the border region is the focus of this initiative.
“Taking the class outside of UTEP allows students to practice macro concepts that they’re learning,” said Moya. “At the same time, the residents benefit from the interaction with the students, faculty and partner organizations.”
Moya explains that due to the large number of individuals rotating through the OC, intake processes were often incomplete and seldom integrated. Through the Community of Practice initiative, interns from the El Paso Community College and various social work programs are working on streamlining the intake process, promoting Coordinated Care, and tracking and conducting referral follow ups to ensure that residents access health and human services and transition out of homelessness. There will always be a smaller number of residents that, due to their conditions, may not be able to transition out of homelessness, so the Community of Practice team will work to ensure they receive the services they need.
In Fall of 2016 and in partnership with UTEP faculty from the Schools of Nursing and Pharmacy, Clinical Laboratory Sciences Program and Department of Social Work, Moya launched the HOPE, Health Opportunity Prevention and Education Project for persons experiencing homelessness. The project is now in its third year.
Recently, the OC applied for and received a $54,000 grant from the Missions in Ministry Foundation to expand the Community of Practice concept, with Center director and UTEP MSW alum Ray Tullius, John Martin (PI) and Dr. Moya as co-principal investigators. The College of Health Sciences is providing support for the effort through Dr. Moya’s time on the grant, along with funding for Health Sciences graduate students. The El Paso Community Foundation (Burkett Family Foundation fund), Hunt Family Foundation and City of El Paso have also joined the effort.
The primary goal of the grant is to finish a needs evaluation that will reduce stigma around homelessness and identify ways to better engage the El Paso community, as well as expand the service integration components and internship opportunities for students. CHS graduate students will help conduct an organization service scan, interview managers, decision makers and residents, which will help drive the assessment, and will help design education and advocacy strategies. A council for the Community of Practice grant, including representatives from each of the funding agencies and the College of Health Sciences, will provide the strategic framework for the grant.
“We’ll see what is needed most, what has worked and what hasn’t worked. We’re going to interview the center leaders, many of whom are former home free residents,” Moya explained.
Ultimately, Moya and OC leaders plan to incorporate and expand on principles and skills for undergraduate and graduate students, utilize interventions that reflect on the spirit of inquiry, and publish the outcomes in peer reviewed journals.
“Our mission as social workers is to help people in need and address social inequalities, to challenge social injustices, respect the dignity and worth of the individual, and recognize the central importance of human rights,” said Moya.
In the interim, Moya hopes to see more efforts on campus in community-engaged scholarship. “We hope that this model will serve as an inspiration for other departments to emulate,” she said.
Developments of this model will be presented in the International Conference of Social Work and Mental Health in York, UK this July.