For Immediate Release
Contact:
Carrie Murdock deGuzman
1.703.519.2057, cmurdock@cswe.org
January 1, 2007 – ALEXANDRIA, VA—The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) has been awarded a renewal grant of more than $4.7 million from the John A. Hartford Foundation to fund its Gero-Ed Center operations for the next five years.
Beginning on July 1, 2007, and ending on June 30, 2012, the grant will fund various programming to better integrate materials about working with older adults into social work curricula. The overarching goal of all Center programs is to enhance the well-being of older adults and their families through the care that social work practitioners provide.
“We are at a critical crossroads with older adults as the nation’s fastest growing population,” said Nancy Hooyman, co-Principal Investigator of the Gero-Ed Center and Hooyman Gerontology Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle. “Without this grant, new generations of social workers would not be as prepared to improve the quality of life for our grandparents, elder neighbors, and millions of older Americans.”
“CSWE is extremely grateful to the Hartford Foundation for promoting the social work gerontological movement to be taken to the next level,” said Julia Watkins, Executive Director of CSWE. “The social work education profession is in an ideal position to make a lasting impact on the care that older adults receive, and CSWE will work tirelessly to optimize this opportunity.”
With the Hartford grant, the CSWE Gero-Ed Center will approach infusing gerontological material into social work curricula from many angles. The Gero-Ed Center will strive to increase gerontological social work student recruitment and leadership development, educational policy and advocacy, and infuse gerontological competencies into curricula for all institutions offering accredited BSW and MSW programs.
Creating future leaders in the field of gerontological social work is a key objective of these goals. The CSWE Gero-Ed Center will give BSW students hands-on learning opportunities through one-on-one experiences with older adults. Admissions staff and faculty advisors at universities will also be supplied with ample social work career and curricular resources. Additionally, the CSWE Gero-Ed Center will provide social work graduates and current doctoral students with syllabi and other resources designed to help them succeed in their profession.
Improving the academic culture through advocacy and curricular change is also central to the Gero-Ed Center’s 5-year plan. The CSWE Gero-Ed Center will continue to advocate the importance of having pervasive gerontology content within social work college text books. Multiple outreach programs will be conducted on a national level to reach faculty who are in the position to infuse gerontology into curricula. These faculty programs will strive to highlight culturally diverse gerontological material to be integrated into foundation and advanced social work courses. ELearning course offerings will be expanded and specialized gerontology content, models, and guidelines will be developed.
Founded in 1929, the John A. Hartford Foundation is a committed champion of training, research, and service system innovations that promote the health and independence of America’s older adults. Through its grant making, the Foundation seeks to strengthen the nation’s capacity to provide effective, affordable care to this rapidly increasing older population by educating “aging-prepared” health professionals (physicians, nurses, social workers), and developing innovations that improve and better integrate health and supportive services. Mr. John A. Hartford and his brother, George L. Hartford, both former chief executives of the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, left the bulk of their estates to the Foundation upon their deaths in the 1950s. Additional information about the Foundation and its programs is available at www.jhartfound.org.
The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) is a nonprofit national association representing more than 3,000 individual members, as well as graduate and undergraduate programs of professional social work education. Founded in 1952, this partnership of educational and professional institutions, social welfare agencies, and private citizens is recognized by the Council for Higher Education Accreditation as the sole accrediting agency for social work education.
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Learn more about the CSWE Gero-Ed Center.