Pitt School of Social Work is pleased to announce that Research Associate Professor Mary Beth Rauktis has been awarded a 2021 Pitt Momentum Funds Seeding Grant. She is leading the project, Supporting the education of youth in foster care during the pandemic: foster parent and agency perspectives, in collaboration with Pitt Social Work professors James Huguley and Fengyan Tang, along with other Pitt partners Aimee Sgourakis (Pitt Library System) and Rachel Robertson (Pitt School of Education).
The primary purpose of this exploratory study is to examine the educational/mental health and social developmental impact of the COVID-required changes in K-12 education (remote learning, fewer or no in-class sessions, no in-school supports and mental health services including IEPs) from the perspective of foster parents who are the primary education support in the home and from foster parent agencies. A second purpose is to obtain foster parent perception of how impactful the initial resources provided through the schools and the foster parent agencies have been for supporting foster parents and what else may be needed to continue to support youth learning at home.
The Pitt Momentum Funds were created to enhance and streamline internal funding opportunities for faculty research while continuing to support high-quality research, scholarship and creative endeavors. The Funds are structured into a tiered set of awards designed to provide allocations for research seeding, teaming and scaling grants.
Seeding Grants support significant and innovative scholarship by individual or small groups of faculty at all ranks at the University of Pittsburgh. In constructing each year’s portfolio of awards, attention is given to supporting early career faculty and areas where opportunities for extramural funding are extremely limited.