This fall, the SSW's Kathryn Collins will be presented the Distinguished Recent Contributions to Social Work Education Award by the Council on Social Work Education. The award will presented at the organization's 2017 Annual Program Meeting taking place in Dallas this coming October.
Kathryn S. Collins is an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland School of Social Work and Co-Principal Investigator of the National Child Traumatic Stress Network (NCTSN) Category II Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) funded Family Informed Trauma Treatment (FITT) Center and Principal Investigator of Trauma Education Connections Initiative. She is a current CSWE Trauma Education Executive Taskforce member and former Co-Chair and member of the CSWE Council/Commission on the Role and Status of Women in Social Work Education.
The focus of her academic career centers on social justice, disparities in access to trauma reflective services, and developing trauma focused social work interventions to promote safety and stability for vulnerable and oppressed populations such as minority children, women, and families surviving poverty and chronic violence in the inner city. Dr. Collins is the co-developer of Trauma Adapted Family Connections (TA-FC), a trauma informed neglect prevention intervention that is being replicated nationally. Along with her colleagues, she is developing and testing a Community Outreach and Resilience in Schools Program aimed to promote the health and well being of children and families who have experienced trauma in their communities. Her commitment to the field is long standing with over 20 years of community based clinical social work practice with children and families. She has numerous publications and has been the PI or Co-PI on state and nationally funded research. Dr. Collins has earned an extramural research award in the National Institutes of Health, National Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities for her research focusing on children from minority communities and their exposure to community violence. Further, she brings her research scholarship, practice and life experience to the classroom where she has received several teaching awards across three university settings.