Active, funded research grants
Bear Project
Jon Singletary & Carrie Arroyo
The BEAR Project (Be Emotionally Aware and Responsive) is a collaboration between Waco ISD, Transformation Waco (the in-district charter of Waco ISD), and the Diana R. Garland School of Social Work to place Advanced Practice MSW interns into schools with the purpose of working with students affected by trauma. Interns work with students on behavioral and social-emotional regulation skills to eliminate barriers to success in schools and partner with teachers and staff to help create a trauma-informed care environment.
Congregational Study for Discernment
Gaynor Yancey & Helen Harris
Across the United States, congregations are struggling with their response to persons in the congregation who identify both as Christian and as LGBTQ. This study explores these issues with congregations including ministers and congregants to assess the position of the congregation, the processes for conversation and decision making, and the impact of decisions on membership and ministry.
SEARCH: Evaluating Homeless Programs
Danielle Parrish
Partnering with SEARCH Homeless Services in Houston, the project seeks to develop a programmatic evaluation template for annual reporting purposes and to work on research/evaluation projects that are designed to improve programming and disseminate research findings to share lessons learned and programmatic/intervention outcomes. As a contracted research scientist and evaluator, Dr. Parrish provides evaluation expertise and conducts research and program evaluation with SEARCH Homeless Services’ early childhood education program (House of Tiny Treasures); a restorative community empowerment program (Coming Home) that brings congregations, volunteers, SEARCH staff and formerly chronically homeless individuals together in community; and the Family First program that serves families dealing with homelessness; among other projects. This work allows Dr. Parrish to continue to be involved in community-based practice in the local community.
Behavioral Health in Developing and Growing Health Education (BRIDGE) Training and Certificate Program
Becky Scott and Elissa Madden
The BRIDGE (Behavioral health professionals Ready to Integrate Diverse and Gold standard practice Effectively) program, funded by a 4-year HRSA grant, focuses on career preparation of MSW students to work in interprofessional behavioral health teams, especially in primary care. BRIDGE provides financial support to students to decrease their post-graduate financial burden, to support their career advancement, while also providing training during their schooling focused on gold standard team-based behavioral interventions for children and adults.
Klaras Center for Families' Homeless Youth Safety net Project: Basic Center Program in the Heart of Texas Region
Jon Singletary and Cheryl Pooler
This project collects data using an admixture of already-developed measures, e.g., RHY-HMIS, PPR, The Comprehensive Human Trafficking Assessment, the VI-SPDAT (Vulnerability Index-Service Prioritization Decision Assistance Tool}, the Columbia Suicide Severity Rating Scale (C-SSRS), the Child & Adolescent Needs & Strengths Assessment (CANS) as well as additional measures created by Baylor's research team. New measures will be constructed to collect and report performance measures as required by the Administration on Children, Youth and Families per the RHYA. The research is providing critical support to youth experiencing homelessness by providing street outreach, emergency shelter at Chase House and case management for education and employment related needs.
Fellowship Southwest - C3I Collaboration
Gaynor Yancey
The Center for Church and Community Impact is in complete alignment with Fellowship Southwest’s aim to help congregations strengthen their ministries, deepen their relationships with God, enhance their connections with each other and contribute to the flourishing of their communities and world. Through this collaboration, the C3I gains capacity and support to launch and pilot the collaboration of the C3I, the FSW and CBF congregations committed to experiencing transformation as they engage their changing communities and aims to accomplish this pilot.
CHOICES-TEEN: Efficacy of a Bundled Risk Reduction Intervention for Juvenile Justice Females
Danielle Parrish
This project studies the efficacy of risk reduction intervention efforts for young women age 14-17 in the juvenile justice system. The grant, entitled CHOICES-TEEN: Efficacy of a Bundled Risk Reduction Intervention for Juvenile Justice Females, is an effort to fill gaps in care for at-risk young women in the juvenile justice system. This randomized controlled trial (N=435) will test the efficacy of the CHOICES-TEEN intervention, which was developed to reduce the risks of pregnancy, HIV/STIs, alcohol use, marijuana use and the overlapping risk of substance-exposed pregnancy among young women involved in community based probation or diversion programming. If efficacious, CHOICES-TEEN is readily scalable and has the potential for dissemination not only to juvenile justice settings but to a wealth of settings that serve young adolescent women at risk of substance-exposed pregnancies and HIV/STIs.
Singing History: Reclaiming Spirituals and the Beloved Community
Stephanie Boddie
In an era of steady news cycles of police brutality and rising racial tensions, this research project aims to: Establish worship practices to help young people (15-25 years old) in Black churches to reconnect their spirituality with the social justice legacy of the African American church, and examine the degree to which these worship practices help young people in Black churches discover new ways to integrate their spirituality, spiritual practices, and their experience of systemic injustices. As Pew Research shows, Black millennials remain the most spiritual among their peers. This grant targets ways Black churches can establish innovative worship practices for millennials to experience church in ways that connect their daily lives to their shared history. Dr. Boddie is working with Black churches to discover ways African American millennials can reclaim traditional Negro Spirituals and practices of the Black church to bolster the Black churches’ effort to bring the energy of the 1960s Civil Rights movement to today’s pursuits of social change.
Transformation Waco-BEAR
Jon Singletary and Carrie Arroyo
This project seeks to conduct mental health intake screening and assessments for students who are placed at the Disciplinary Alternative Education Program (DAEP) to identify, plan, treat, and appropriately refer these students for mental health services with the hopes of reducing recidivism to DAEP.
Catalyzing a cultural shift toward integrating religious and spiritual competencies in mental health competencies in mental health through training and systems-level change
Holly Oxhandler and Clay Polson
This project seeks to better understand faculty views, behaviors, and needs regarding training in religious and spiritual competencies. The project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and is a subaward from the University of Southern Alabama. To date, no study has simultaneously examined the views, behaviors, and experiences of all graduate faculty across the four major mental health disciplines with respect to training students to ethically and effectively integrate their clients’ R/S into mental health treatment. The research team will obtain a national, baseline assessment of interdisciplinary graduate faculty views, behaviors, and experiences with training students on this area of practice.
Qualitative Study On The Effectiveness of CASA Advocacy in McLennan County
Elissa Madden
This is a study in collaboration with CASA of McLennan County. Qualitative methods will be used to provide an in-depth examination of the impact of the Court Appointed Special Advocate program model on different aspects of wellbeing for foster children in McLennan County. The goal of this study is to identify and assess some of the more intangible aspects of the CASA volunteer model not easily evaluated through secondary data analysis.
Waco Family Medicine Integrated Behavioral Health System Program Evaluation
Becky Scott
Dr. Becky Scott will provide program implementation (of the larger IBH program) and consultation and program evaluation supervision (related to pediatric behavioral programming). Some of the research questions explored include the following: Does the participation training in CARE trauma-sensitive, pediatric interactional model result in skill gain for family medicine residents, nursing staff, and front desk staff? Do pediatric patients’ scores on the Eyberg Childhood Behavioral Inventory decrease after participating in IntegratedCARE? Do parents who participate in PriCARE and/or PCIT rate the treatment at 50% or higher on the Treatment Attitude Inventory?
Stepped CARE for Externalized Behaviors and Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACES) 2021-2022
Becky Scott
This project works with Waco Family Medicine to implement and evaluate a four-tiered primary care treatment program for children with disruptive behaviors. The stepped-care program allows parents and children to receive the treatment they and their child want, in their pediatric clinic. The tiers of treatment are based on symptom severity and stated need and are predicated on the well-established, trauma-informed behavioral intervention model, Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT).
University of Houston's HRSA BHWET GLOBE
Danielle Parrish
Dr. Danielle Parrish is the program evaluator for the University of Houston's HRSA BHWET GLOBE- Global Leaders of Behavioral Health Education program. The Graduate College of Social Work at the University of Houston has been running a professional training grant from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) since 2012. GLOBE Team Training strives to increase the number of culturally competent social workers who deliver behavioral health services to underserved populations.