$2.5M grant aids BCSSW behaviorial health internship program
The Boston College School of Social Work has launched a paid internship program that will match BCSSW students with Boston community-based providers offering behavioral health services to Black and Latinx populations.
A $2.5 million training grant from the Massachusetts Department of Mental Health (DMH) will fund the Behavioral Health Paid Internship Program (BHPIP), which is administered through BCSSW.
Professor Rocío Calvo, who is the BCSSW assistant dean for equity, justice, and inclusion and principal investigator for the BHPIP, said the program helps address several critical needs simultaneously. Black and Latinx populations in urban areas are among those most likely to be underinsured or uninsured, she explained, and therefore stand to benefit from publicly funded behavioral health services. Research shows, however, that those services are more effective if they are culturally and linguistically congruent with their target populations—which can be difficult if there is a lack of Black and Latinx behavioral health professionals.
Through the BHPIP, Calvo continued, BCSSW can recruit Black and Latinx students who will work with the agencies as paid interns, creating a mutually beneficial relationship: Students will gain valuable experience for their professional development and credentials, while enabling the providers to better serve their clients. In addition, the DMH grant enables the school to pay field placement site supervisors from community-based agencies.
“Being able to pay site supervisors as well as offer stipends for our M.S.W. students is tremendously helpful in affirming our close relationship with behavioral health providers, especially when they are facing one of the worst mental health crises in memory.”
Calvo said the BHPIP represents the scaling-up of a model that has already been tested and found to be effective: the school’s Latinx Leadership Initiative (LLI), of which she is the founding director. Through the LLI, students take classes in Spanish and complete their field practice training with Latinx communities in preparation for working with Spanish-speaking clients using evidence-based interventions. Now in its 10th year, the LLI graduates about 25 students annually.
“The LLI is a model of implementation that’s been tested for a decade, and it works,” said Calvo. “Students develop a nuanced understanding of Latinx populations, the systemic challenges they face in accessing equitable education, social services, and health care, and the most effective interventions to overcome these challenges. The BHPIP builds on the successful approach pioneered through the LLI.
“Being able to pay site supervisors as well as offer stipends for our M.S.W. students is tremendously helpful in affirming our close relationship with behavioral health providers, especially when they are facing one of the worst mental health crises in memory.”
The BHPIP will award non-competitive stipends to eligible students across three M.S.W. cohorts: current students entering their second year of field education, incoming students for their first and second years of field education, and to-be-recruited M.S.W. students for their first year of field education.
The Field Education Office will assess students’ educational and life experience, social work-related experience, learning needs, and career goals, as well as their interest in working with Latinx or Black populations, so as to find the appropriate match for an internship among area behavioral health providers. Calvo said there will be key roles for LLI Assistant Director Ximena Soto; Assistant Dean for Field Education Susan Coleman; Assistant Professor Tyrone Parchment, co-director for the school’s Black Leadership Initiative; and Career Services Director Cindy Snell.
Depending on students’ field of practice, the BHPIP curriculum will be a combination of LLI core courses—including Rethinking Diversity, Systems of Oppression and Privilege, Human Behavior & the Social Environment, and Social Services with Latinx Populations in the United States—with field courses such as Latinx Communities Field of Practice; Afrocentric Field of Practice; Children, Youth, and Families Field of Practice; and Mental Health Field of Practice courses. The BLI/Afrocentric Social Field of Practice Courses are Advanced Practice in Afrocentric Social Work, History of Activism in Black Communities, and Afrocentric Organizations. Both the Children, Youth, and Families and Mental Health fields of practice emphasize trauma-informed behavioral health care.