Social Work Professor Receives Five Grants to Support Students

Social work professor Blake Beecher has received five grants that will provide scholarships and stipends to Master of Social Work students.

Cal State San Marcos social work professor Blake Beecher has received five grants this semester that provide students scholarships and stipends and support the Master of Social Work (MSW) program.

The total amount of the grants is almost $8 million.

The funding is allowing the Department of Social Work to offer about 100 training stipends or scholarships covering full tuition and fees to MSW students this academic year. The department plans to provide approximately the same number of stipends/scholarships during the 2024-25 academic year.

"The Department of Social Work is thrilled to receive these grants and the level of student support that we will be able to provide over the next few years," Beecher said. “These grants will be life-changing for hundreds of social work students and impactful on the local community.”

The five grants are as follows:

$1.8 million this year (funding dates back to 2015) from a federal grant through the Title IV-E Social Security Act to fund the Title IV-E child welfare stipend program, which provides specialized training for students who are committed to working in public child welfare. The program’s goal is to improve the quality of foster care, reduce the number of children in foster care, return children to their homes as soon as conditions permit, and facilitate the adoption or permanent placement of children who cannot be returned to their homes. Students selected to participate in the stipend program gain knowledge and experience working in child public welfare settings that will prepare them for a career in the field.
$4.8 million for a four-year grant ($1.2 million each year) from the California Department of Health Care Access and Information (HCAI) to fund the Social Work Education Capacity Expansion (SWECE) grant program, the purpose of which is to fund institutions and organizations to increase the number of social workers serving in California, especially with children and youth. Among the goals of the grant are to recruit culturally and linguistically diverse MSW students who reflect the sociodemographic and other characteristics of underserved communities, to provide education and training in how to deliver culturally competent and linguistically appropriate behavioral health care, and to increase the number of hours that MSW students train in underserved communities.
$960,000 for a two-year grant ($480,000 each year) from the California Social Work Education Center to fund the public behavioral health training program, which is designed to increase the number of MSW students who pursue and are committed to careers providing behavioral health services to consumers in California’s public systems of care.
$240,000 for a two-year grant ($120,000 each year) from the California Social Work Education Center to fund the Adult Protective Services (APS) training program. The goal of the program is to enhance the capacity of California’s county and tribal APS programs to meet the complex needs of aging and vulnerable adults.
$166,000 from the California Social Work Education Center to fund a one-year pilot program that provides specialized training for students who are committed to working in tribal child welfare agencies. The grant gives additional stipends to MSW students who are Native American/Indigenous and who will commit to fulfilling their employment obligation in child welfare services in a tribal agency or reservation.