- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ýLR hosts Arkansas Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect

Ajani Oyindamola — Tue, 09 Aug 2016 18:05:03 +0000

The keynote address of the 13th annual Arkansas Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect will be given by the mother of Morgan Nick, one of the most well-known missing person’s cases in Arkansas history.

Colleen Nick

Colleen Nick’s daughter, Morgan, was kidnapped in June 1995 from a baseball game in Alma, Arkansas, and never found. Nick’s keynote address, “Morgan’s Hope,” will be delivered at 8:30 a.m. Tuesday, Aug. 30, at Embassy Suites of Little Rock. Nick will give a first-hand account of how family members cope with the pain and anguish of the search for an abducted child and their experiences with law enforcement, advocates, and prosecutors. The conference, led by , a community service unit of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Social Work, will run from Aug. 30 to Sept. 1 at Embassy Suites, 11301 Financial Centre Parkway. Presenters at the conference will provide current information on prevention, investigation, casework, intervention, and support related to working with children and families affected by abuse and neglect. The keynote speaker is the founder of the Morgan Nick Foundation, which assists thousands of families in crisis by providing intervention, assistance, and reunification to children and their families. Nick is a nationally recognized spokeswoman and advocate for missing children. She was instrumental in Arkansas’ adoption of the Morgan Nick AMBER Alert system. Nick travels the nation educating law enforcement about missing and exploited children. She is a co-creator of Team H.O.P.E., a support program at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children that serves families of the missing. Nick also is a senior team coordinator, supervising numerous volunteers and providing immediate and ongoing support to families in 12 states.

How to end child abuse

In addition to the keynote, Victor Vieth, founder and senior director of the Gundersen National Child Protection Training Center, will deliver a general session, “Unto the Third Generation: A Call to End Child Abuse in Three Generations,” at 8:30 a.m. Wednesday, Aug. 31. In this session, participants will learn about the five obstacles that prevent people from ending child abuse and the sweeping changes taking place in the child protection system that will significantly reduce child abuse over the course of the next three generations. Melissa Snow, child sex trafficking program specialist for the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children, will present two sessions on child sex trafficking Aug. 31. These sessions will help attendees learn how to identify and respond to youth who are being commercially sexually exploited and learn about resources and support available through the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Nearly 500 professionals are expected to attend the conference, featuring 33 workshop sessions. Participants can earn up to 15 hours of continuing education credits. Session topics include the impact of addiction on families, nurturing parenting programs, corporal punishment and religious beliefs, child homicide investigations, the ethics of testifying in court, and bullying. The Arkansas Children’s Hospital, the Arkansas Commission on Child Abuse, Rape, and Domestic Violence, and the Arkansas Department of Human Services Division of Children and Family Services are contributing partners of the conference. For more information and to register, contact conference coordinator Robin Wilson at 501.296.1920 or visit.

��Vlog��ýLR hosts MidSOUTH conference for Integrated Behavioral Health Studies

Ajani Oyindamola — Wed, 08 Jun 2016 14:09:46 +0000

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock School of Social Work will host the 44th annual MidSOUTH Summer Conference for Integrated Behavioral Health Studies Wednesday June 8-10 in the Donaghey Student Center. The conference offers three days of training in integrated behavioral health studies, including those involving substance abuse, mental health, and child welfare. Counseling and mental health professionals can earn up to 23.5 hours of continuing education. is the community service unit of the ��Vlog��ýLR School of Social Work, which provides leadership, training, and product support in the areas of addiction, child welfare, technology, distance learning, and organizational development. The conference’s keynote speaker is Kevin Hines, a suicide prevention expert, mental health advocate, and peer counselor. He will speak at 10:30 a.m. Thursday, June 9, in Donaghey Student Center Meeting Rooms A-C. In his speech, “Cracked Not Broken…Surviving and Thriving After a Suicide Attempt,” Hines discusses his suicide attempt in 2000 to jump off the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco and his path to recovery. Hines appeared in Eric Steel’s 2006 British-American documentary film, “The Bridge,” which filmed 365 days at the Golden Gate Bridge and captured numerous suicides. Hines will lead a discussion after the movie’s presentation at 4:30 p.m. June 9. To see a full schedule of events, visit the. For more information, please contact Conference Coordinator Charlotte Besch at 501-569-8459 or at cabesch@midsouth.ualr.edu. In the upper right photo, Kevin Hines, the conference’s keynote speaker, is shown. Contributed photo.

Annual conference highlights integrated mental health care

Gloria King — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 17:49:53 +0000

The 2015 MidSOUTH Summer Conference for Integrated Behavioral Health Studies (MSSC) will be held from Wednesday through Friday, June 10 to 12, on the ��Vlog��ýLR campus. The conference is bringing a full slate of workshops, speakers, and panelists experienced in dealing in trauma-informed care and integrated mental health care for those individuals faced with many challenges in their lives. The conference is in its 43rd year and its 21st at ��Vlog��ýLR, during which time there have been many changes in the fields of substance abuse, mental health, and child welfare. MidSOUTH, the training center for the ��Vlog��ýLR School of Social Work, is co-sponsoring the annual event with help from the Division of Behavioral Health Services of the Arkansas Department of Human Services. For more information, contact Program Manager Charlotte Besch at the MidSOUTH Center for Prevention and Training at ��Vlog��ýLR, at 501.569.8459. More about the conference speakers Tonier Cain used to live a life of hustling the streets of Annapolis, Md. Known as “Neen” at the time, in just 15 years, she had been arrested 83 times with 66 convictions. Neen had–and lost–four children, she was a crack addict, a prostitute, and desperately lost. Today she receives requests to serve as the keynote speaker for the United Nations, government agencies, teachers, community and civic organizations, mental health agencies, substance abuse programs, corrections facilities and trauma survivors. She has been featured in the documentary, “Behind Closed Doors: Trauma Survivors and the Psychiatric System,” and is the subject of the award-winning film, “Healing Neen.” After surviving a childhood of unspeakable sexual abuse, unrelenting violence, and betrayal by systems that were charged with helping, Cain stands before her audiences today, a testimony to the resiliency of the human spirit exemplifying the innate human instinct to survive. Christy Matta, author of “The Stress Response: How Dialectical Behavior Therapy Can Free You from Needless Anxiety, Worry, Anger, and Other Symptoms of Stress,” is trained intensively in Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Matta also has extensive training in Mindfulness. She has provided clinical supervision to DBT residential programs and was a member of the senior administrative team that designed Grove Street Adolescent Residential Program, a winner of the American Psychiatric Association’s Gold Award. Dr. Steven Schroeder is the distinguished professor of health and health care for the Department of Medicine, University of California at San Francisco, where he also heads the Smoking Cessation Leadership Center. The center, funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the American Legacy Foundation, works with leaders of more than 80 American health professional organizations and healthcare institutions to increase the cessation rate for smokers. Between 1990 and 2002, he was president and CEO of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. During that time the foundation made grant expenditures of almost $4 billion in pursuit of its mission of improving the health and health care of all Americans. The foundation developed new programs in substance abuse prevention and treatment, care at the end of life, and health insurance expansion for children, among others. Kendra Johnson, state director of HRC Arkansas, leads the organization’s Project One America effort across the state to bring equality to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people. Johnson received an undergraduate degree from Spelman College and a graduate degree from ��Vlog��ýLR, where her capstone project was “HIV/AIDS Prevention Programs in Arkansas: A Needs Assessment.” She most recently worked at Better Community Development as Lead In-Person Assister. Johnson has worked with Southerners on New Ground and also served as the interim executive director of the Women’s Project in Little Rock. Panel members will consist of individuals working with LBGTQ youth; with the issue of homelessness; with cultural aspects in the community dealing with race, ethnicity and faith; with health disparity issues, and with the issues of suicide and violence.

Department of Human Services provides $200,000 grant to MidSOUTH

Gloria King — Tue, 24 Mar 2015 17:28:32 +0000

The Arkansas Department of Human Services has announced $200,000 in grant funding to , the community service unit of the ��Vlog��ýLR School of Social Work. The grant, titled “Child, Adolescent and Family Education and Training,” began March 2 and will conclude June 30, 2015. The funding will help MidSouth enhance its clinicians’ responsiveness to the behavioral needs of children, youth, and their families. In addition, the grant will provide for the enhanced quality of services to assist the Arkansas Department of Behavioral and Health Services, Children’s Treatment Services. The scope of the MidSOUTH project will also include the expansion of workforce development, continuing education, resource development, and technical assistance to professionals and family members. MidSOUTH provides leadership, training, and product support in the areas of addiction, child welfare, technology, distance learning, and organizational development. For more information about MidSOUTH’s programs and services, call 501-569-3067.

- University News Archive - ����Vlog��ý Little Rock

����Vlog��ýLR hosts Arkansas Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect

����Vlog��ýLR hosts MidSOUTH conference for Integrated Behavioral Health Studies

Annual conference highlights integrated mental health care

Department of Human Services provides $200,000 grant to MidSOUTH

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

��Vlog��ýLR hosts Arkansas Conference on Child Abuse and Neglect

��Vlog��ýLR hosts MidSOUTH conference for Integrated Behavioral Health Studies