Faculty at Yeshiva University’s Wurzweiler School of Social Work recently received a four-year $1.9 million training grant from the United States Department of Health and Human Services --- Human Resources Service Administration (HRSA). The grant, which continues a previous three-year $1.4 million grant, supports the school’s training of second-year master’s degree students to work with high-risk adolescents and transitional-age youth in New York City.

Dr. Ronnie Glassman

“We are grateful to be honored with this opportunity to serve the youth of New York City, and to sponsor and teach our fine students who daily do their utmost to make a difference,” said Dr. Ronnie Glassman, director of field instruction at Wurzweiler and the grant’s principal investigator. The grant focuses on providing students with social work skills in trauma-informed therapy and group work, and will support the training of 140 students. It also provides clinical supervision for students, which increases the number of field placements and allows partner agencies to expand their services to vulnerable urban youth. “In the last three years through the current grant, we have graduated 85 MSW students who we have trained to provide clinical service to the adolescent population, and who have committed to work with teens upon graduation,” said Glassman. “Through internships in clinics, schools and child welfare settings, social work students have worked therapeutically with adolescent clients individually and in groups to prevent school dropout and teen pregnancy, and to provide clinical interventions focused on overcoming obstacles to emotional health and positive forward movement. For example, in one year of the grant, over 250 group sessions with teens were conducted by grant students.” “Dr. Glassman typifies the hard work, dedication and incisive focus of Wurzweiler faculty and staff on our students’ education and training,” said Dr. Danielle Wozniak, the Dorothy and David Schachne Dean of Wurzweiler. “This HRSA grant will enable us to support more students with stipends as they work with adolescents in schools, and child welfare and mental health settings. This work is critical to healthy adults and a healthy society.”