The Greenspun College of Urban Affairs Center for Urban Partnerships (CUP) recently collaborated with the Clark County Department of Family Services (DFS) on a $2.5 million, five-year project funded by the Administration for Children and Families of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The project is designed to improve outcomes for children and families in the child welfare system. Clark County DFS is among only nine organizations across the country to receive federal funding.

Interim CUP director Dr. Ramona Denby, who serves as the lead evaluator for this federal initiative, has organized an

interdisciplinary team of UNLV researchers to provide methodological expertise, statistical and analytic support and conceptual guidance for the “Caring Communities Demonstration Project,” aimed at providing intervention and services for grandparents and others who assume care of their relatives’ abused and neglected children.

The collaboration between CUP and DFS is an example of one of the many projects that CUP facilitates. A citizen policy advisory board that includes several prominent local community leaders spearheads CUP’s many projects, which are organized into five research cores, headed by UNLV researchers Dr. Pat Markos (Counseling), Dr. Daniel Allen (Psychology), Dr. Larry Ashley (Counseling), Dr. Mary Ann Overcamp-Martini (Social Work) and Dr. Joanne Thompson (Social Work).

The Clark County DFS, under the leadership of director Susan Klein-Rothchild and assistant director Dr. Joy Salmon, will use its first $500,000 annual installment to implement the project. The U.S. Children’s Bureau has commissioned the nationwide demonstration projects as an outgrowth of the state Child and Family Services Reviews that have shown that serious deficiencies exist in most state child welfare agencies in terms of assuring children‘s safety, finding them permanent homes and protecting their well-being.

For more information about this and other CUP collaborations with the community in the areas of child welfare, mental health, social services and criminal justice, contact CUP at 895-2926.