Child Welfare Education and Support Program Overview

Are you interested in working with families and children in foster, adoptive, or child protection services?  It can be incredibly rewarding to work empowering and strengthening families, and advocating for the safety and mental health of children.  Public Child Welfare offers social workers the opportunity to learn and practice the skills they are taught in their BSW and/or MSW degree programs.

A $8,000 stipend is available to students interested in applying for jobs working with children at Departments of Social Services in the state of Virginia. This stipend is available to Social Work students in their last year of the BSW and/or for two years of their MSW program. This stipend can be used to help pay for your education and expenses. During your education several additional trainings are provided to stipend recipients to help prepare them for this challenging work. Beginning three months prior to graduation, students must apply for all positions available for which they are qualified within 100 miles commuting radius of their home--until they are employed or until 3 months after graduation. The jobs that qualify under this program include: Foster Care, Adoption, Child Protective Services, Prevention of out-of-home services, Family preservation, and Family Services. Graduates must also submit a completed employment search packet to Michael Sinclair within three months of graduation.

Each of these positions offers you the opportunity to use your relationship building, interviewing, assessment, and service planning skills. Many of the cases are difficult and require you to utilize services outside DSS to help families provide a safer environment to raise their children. In cases where children have to be placed outside their home the goal is usually reunification with their family of origin. You are the person developing relationships with all the parties involved in the cases: parents, children, grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, mental health providers, law enforcement, medical professionals, attorneys, judges, foster and adoptive families, and other service providers involved in the families' lives. You are at the center of the case, the information from each of these people comes to you. You and your supervisor then decide the disposition of the case and make recommendations to and with the family. You work closely with the family and children supporting them through a difficult time in their lives. You empower the family to make decisions about the changes they want and need to make in their lives to offer a safer and more nurturing place to raise their children.

Click here if you are interested in applying for a Child Welfare Stipend, learning more about the Radford University Child Welfare opportunities, or exploring curriculum options.