Barbara Pierce

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https://hdl.handle.net/1805/37290

From Clinician to Community-Engaged Translational Practitioner: Building Social and Mental Health Programs for Children, Families, and Practitioners

Barbara Pierce, Ph.D., LCSW, has been a clinical social worker for 40 years and an academic for 20 years. She is a Professor of Social Work at the IU School of Social Work and a Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholars Fellowship Program graduate. She specializes in teaching about and working to dismantle the destructive effects of the social determinants of health/mental health by creating a culture of health and trauma-responsive programming for children, youth, and their families. I am also dedicated to working to create trauma-responsive work cultures for all social workers, teachers, and other professionals dedicated to working with children and youth. Dr. Pierce is also a community-engaged participatory action scholar. She facilitates trainings to state, national, and tribal federal leaders on developing a resilient and trauma-responsive workforce. Her new grant, part of the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, is a Mental Health Service Professional Demonstration Project to build capacity for school mental health services in Indiana. This $5.7 million 5-year grant will serve low-income school corporations in communities with low mental health service capacity. Dr. Pierce's focus on bringing trauma-responsive and equitable health programming to students and practitioners is another excellent example of how IUPUI's faculty members are TRANSLATING their RESEARCH INTO PRACTICE.

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Browsing Barbara Pierce by Author "Hall, James"

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    Effective workload management in child welfare: Understanding the relationship between caseload and workload
    (Wiley, 2019-12) Kim, Jangmin; Yi, Eun-Hye; Pierce, Barbara; Hall, James; School of Social Work
    A common assumption in public social service organizations is that workload may be positively associated with caseload. However, few empirical studies have examined what specific characteristics of caseload affect caseworkers' workloads in the child welfare system. This study attempts to address this gap by identifying specific individual and regional factors that influence both subjective and objective dimensions of workloads. Survey data were collected from 1,244 caseworkers at one public child welfare agency in a Midwestern state in the United States. The data indicated that both perceptions of unmanageable workloads and self‐reported overtime work were significantly higher when caseworkers had a greater number of cases than the state caseload standard for the investigations units and worked with at least two different types of cases simultaneously (e.g., working with both investigation and ongoing service cases). Additionally, sufficient staffing numbers to meet caseload demands at the regional level significantly decreased the odds ratio of having to do overtime work. The major findings suggest that the objective and subjective dimensions of workload vary by individual‐ and regional‐level variables. Practice implications are discussed for effective and efficient workload management in the public child welfare system.