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 the following research/evaluation projects that are designed to improve programming and disseminate research findings to share lessons learned and programmatic/intervention outcomes.

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.

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. 

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.