Στα πλαίσια της διεθνούς κινητικότητας, η κα Κούτρα Κλειώ, Αναπληρώτρια Καθηγήτρια του τμήματος Κοινωνικής Εργασίας του ΕΛΜΕΠΑ επισκέφθηκε τον Σεπτέμβριο 2023, τρια συνεργαζόμενα πανεπιστήμια του Ελληνικού Μεσογειακού Πανεπιστημίου στις Ηνωμένες Πολιτείες της Αμερικής.
Στα πλαίσια της επίσκεψης της πέραν των διαλέξεων που έδωσε σε Springfield College, Massachusetts και Rutgers University, New Jersey είχε την ευκαιρία να συζητήσει με μέλη ΔΕΠ των τμημάτων Κοινωνικής Εργασίας σε Springfield και Southern Connecticut State University αλλά και με τους Προέδρους των Τμημάτων Κοινωνικής Εργασίας προτάσεις για την περαιτέρω εδραίωση και ανάπτυξη των συνεργασιών του τμήματος και κατά επέκταση και του πανεπιστημίου.
Συνοπτικά παρακάτω φωτογραφικό υλικό ανα πανεπιστήμιο
1. Springfield College, Department of Social Work
During my visit to the Social Work Department at Springfield College, I had the opportunity to work on a number of different levels. I was the 1st speaker at the TRIVE Events for September 2023 – Event Calendar (springfield.edu). The presentation was entitled “Trauma Recovery of Women Who Have Experienced Gender-Based Violence: A Narrative Ethnographic Approach”. I also held a series of meetings with the faculty members, as well as with the Chair and Dean. The rest of the days, I had the opportunity to visit the student’s counselling services at Smith College as well as other health care facilities at Springfield of Massachusetts as the Mercy Hospital etc. In the coming days, we’re going to organize a meeting involving the faculty of both departments to plan our new steps.
2. Southern Connecticut State University, Department of Social Work
Additional I had a meeting with Prof. Joyce Taylor from Southern Connecticut State University. We have previous collaborate in one of our postgraduate programs. Prof. Taylor was Deputy Commissioner at the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, led major reforms and increased accountability and efficiency within this large department with its $750 million annual budget and 2,700 employees. She chaired the governor’s interagency task force on the Juan F Consent Decree, which resulted from a federal class-action lawsuit for child welfare reform. She obtained increased federal revenues under Title IV-E in order to: establish more realistic caseload standards; increase staff training and supervision; and build capacity for collecting and analyzing data, which is vitally important in achieving positive outcomes for children. She proposed legislation and obtained $1 million state funds to develop the Adoption Assistance Program (AAP) at the UCONN Health Center, a post-master’s certificate program (UCONN and SCSU) for increasing therapeutic competencies for network of specialized clinicians to serve adopted children and new college funds for adopted children. Our discussion was mainly focused on child protection and on training professional’s social workers in child risk assessment.
3. Rutgers University, New Jersey
Last but not least, I visited Rutgers University. We are working closely together with Prof. Matsaganis and Prof. Touger for more than two years under the International Academic Partnerships Program – Greece (IAPP-Greece). IAAP is an academic incubator program sponsored in 2020 by the Greek Ministry of Education, the U.S. Department of Education, the Institute of International Education, and the Fulbright Foundation, among other organizations, designed to promote international collaboration between U.S. and Greek institutions of higher education. I was invited as Rutgers IAPP-Greece Initiative Guest Speaker (Tue, 9/12) at “Mixed Methods in Gender-Based Violence.
