Thanks to a $5.5 million grant, select students graduating from the University of Maryland Baltimore School of Social Work will be funneled directly into local public schools as mental health professionals.
The U.S. Department of Education’s grant will fund 105 school-based mental health fellows over the next five years, program director Wendy Shaia said in a press conference on Thursday. The new program aims to specifically support Black and Hispanic mental health providers to more accurately reflect the K-12 student body in central Maryland.
“Representation doesn’t solve every problem, which is one of the reasons why we’re doing so much work around anti-racism and anti-oppression,” said Shaia, who also serves as the director of the university’s Center for Restorative Change.
“We’re trying very hard to merge those two things,” she said. “Both the representation, and the full analysis that will allow our social workers to be in schools and appropriately assess children using very real data and not our biases and prejudices.”
A 2020 study from the Council on Social Work found that nearly 60% of social workers in the U.S. are white. The study also found that students who earned a masters degree in social work had 50% more student debt than students 10 years prior.
Under the new grant-funded program, students selected from Coppin State University and University of Maryland’s Baltimore city and county campuses will receive $1,000 monthly stipends as they complete their one-year graduate degree. They will also have access to clothing stipends and mentorship opportunities.
Students already enrolled in the School of Social Work will have their tuition almost completely covered by the funding.
Melissa Buckley, a professor of social work at Coppin State, said this financial support will “inevitably increase” the number of Black and low-income college students who pursue graduate degrees in social work.
“They will be able to afford to continue their education, as well as some of the supplementary costs that come up as a result of being in graduate school,” she said.
This means that students in Baltimore city and county schools, along with other neighboring districts, will see counselors that share their identities, leaders said.
The school-based mental health fellows will “reflect the community identities, ethnicities, racial makeup, and abilities and cultures of the students in the schools in which they will work,” said Adrienne Ekas, assistant dean of social work at University of Maryland Baltimore County.
Janae Jackson, one of this year’s selected fellows, grew up in Baltimore City. She said she didn’t see a lot of people like her working in her schools – let alone working as mental health professionals.
“It really wasn’t a lot of representatives that could understand where I’m coming from, as far as poverty or hardships,” Jackson said. “So I definitely would love to be a part of that system that gives the child, or multiple children, a chance to feel supported, a chance to feel heard, in a way that not everyone might understand.”
Ivan Flores, another fellow, attended public school in Montgomery County when he was younger.
“Growing up, I didn’t really see much opportunity or emphasis on mental health in general,” he said. “So I just wanted to give back, try to see if I can make a difference in the county, within the system.”
Local school systems have experienced heightened need for mental health professionals since the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2020, the percentage of Maryland students diagnosed with anxiety and depression increased by 36% from four years prior.
Shaia said the program aims to help schools, who are struggling to recruit and retain mental health professionals, bridge the gap.
The fellowship will “build a pipeline leading from social work students’ undergraduate education into the graduate social work program” – ending in placement in a local school, she said.
