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Community Partnership Action Award

The CSWE Commission for Diversity and Social & Economic Justice is proud to announce the Community Partnership Action (CPA) Award to honor the contributions of schools and departments of social work and social work students (BSW, MSW, PhD/DSW) in advancing community partnership action. The CPA Award will be presented at the Carl A. Scott Memorial Lecture given annually at the CSWE Annual Program Meeting. "Community" is broadly defined as a self-organized network of people with a common agenda, cause, or interest and is not limited by physical locality.
 
Community partnership actions are central to the advancement of social and economic justice, which is intrinsic to social work education. Historically, dating back to the settlement houses, our profession is rooted in working with the community to solve social problems and issues. Community partnerships enhance social justice work by promoting meaningful reciprocal collaboration. These activities also develop connections between theory and practice in real-life contexts toward promoting social, economic, and environmental justice competencies.

Two awards will be given annually, one for each of the following categories.

  1. Social Work Program Award. Recognizes a CSWE-accredited social work program that encourages its faculty, students, and staff members to engage in community-based social, economic, or environmental justice activities. Some examples might be particular classes, advocacy activities, field assignments or projects, interprofessional collaboration, and culturally based interventions.
  2. Student Project Award. Recognizes a student (BSW, MSW, or PhD/DSW) who has engaged in a community partnership activity that successfully promoted social, economic, or environmental justice.

Selection Criteria

All submissions will be peer-reviewed by the CPA Award subcommittee of the Commission for Diversity and Social & Economic Justice using the following criteria:

  • The extent to which the educational efforts or the community partnership action project effectively address social, economic, or environmental social justice issues
  • The extent to which the educational efforts or the community partnership action project empowers the community or the community leaders
  • The extent to which the educational efforts or community partnership action project are evaluated and disseminated

2021 Awardees

Tanzilya-Oren.jpg

Student Awardee: Tanzilya Oren, Fordham University

Tanzilya Oren is a PhD candidate in social work at the Graduate School of Social Service at Fordham University. She researches transformative organizing in the communities of asylum seekers and refugees and asylum and refugee policies and practices. Tanzilya is a New York State-licensed master social worker, a community-engaged researcher, and a refugee advocate. She works as an education advisor at RIF Asylum Support and coordinates a project on access and use of mental health services by women asylum seekers at Fordham University. She is a member of the advisory group on social work education at the International Movement ATD Fourth World. She serves on the advisory committee of the New York University English Language Institute’s Collaborative for New Immigrant Education. After a career in women’s rights and civil society development in Uzbekistan and South Africa, since 2010 she has worked in New York in immigrant services. She was certified as a career counselor at the New York State Department of Labor, where she provided career services to immigrant workers in the pilot Immigrant Workforce Project. Later she managed and developed the Andrew Romay New Immigrant Center at the English-Speaking Union of the United States. She holds an MSc in social work from Columbia University and a combined MA/BA in teaching and English from Samarkand University.

Program Awardee: University of Missouri School of Social Work Integrative Behavioral Health ClinicUniversity-of-Missouri-BHC.jpg

The University of Missouri School of Social Work’s Integrative Behavioral Health Clinic (IBHC) was established in 2014 with a two-fold aim to address disparities in the availability of comprehensive and integrated mental health care for people who are uninsured or unable to afford health care and to provide an intensive experiential learning opportunity to students. Clinical service coordination, student supervision, and research are overseen by two faculty members who are also licensed clinical social workers, Professors Danielle Easter and Kelli Canada. IBHC faculty members teach core social work courses, which allows for classroom learning integration throughout the IBHC experience. The IBHC is co-located with a free physical health clinic run by medical students. IBHC students work with the medical team, psychiatry, nursing, and nutrition services to develop plans of care for their shared clients. Students provide short- and long-term evidence-based interventions and use standardized measures with data visualization to track progress with clients. Case management services are also available, as needed. The IBHC aims to improve client quality of life, reduce distressing symptoms, and increase access to care for clients. To date, the IBHC provided services to more than 400 people and trained more than 130 graduate social work and counseling psychology students.

Previous Winners

2020

  • Program Award went to Center for Innovation in Behavioral Health Education & Research at Simmons University School of Social Work
  • Student Project Award went to Sujeeta Elizabeth Menon

2019

  • Program Award went to Age-Friendly/Ohio State University
  • Student Project Award recipient was Suk-hee Kim, PhD, COI, MSW