CBR Community Organizations & Research Needs

Below are some of the organizations that have contacted the CSC with research questions and needs.  Each organization is interested in collaborating with faculty and/or students. If you are interested in posting your organization's research needs or would like to work with any of these organizations, please contact Marina Navia at mnavia1@nd.edu or Naomi Penney at npenney@nd.edu.

Family & Children's Center Counseling Services (Request made in 2007)

Issue: Family Services

The Family and Children's Center Counseling Services' team consists of the area's most skilled and caring social workers, marriage and family therapists, psychologists, case workers, family support specialists and case managers.  The mission of the Family & Children's Center Counseling Services is to empower individuals and families by promoting human growth and dignity and by preventing abuse through advocacy, education, counseling, and supportive services.

Research Requests:

• Sex Offender Database (SOMM) - there is currently no systematic way of tracking the progress of offender.
• Adolescent Sex Offenders - This project needs a monitoring and evalutation program created to set and track outcome measures for the intensive outpatient program used in lieu of a residential treatment program.  There is also a need to develop a tracking system/program for juvenile offenders once they leave the system.  In particular, discovering how adolescent offenders make the transition to adulthood. 
• Post Partum depression - This program is just beginning so there is a need to put evaluative measures in place now during the program planning stage.

The Family Justice Center and Saint Mary’s College Social Work Project:

Research on Assessing New Domestic Violence Program in Saint Joseph County (Request made in 2008)

Issue: Family Services

As conceptualized by St. Mary’s student Connie Adams, this project partners St. Mary’s faculty and students with Notre Dame faculty and students and the staff at the St. Joseph County Family Justice Center. Opened in February of 2007, The Family Justice Center of St. Joseph County is an innovative collaboration of social service, medical, criminal justice, and civil legal providers whose expertise offers victims of domestic violence and their families multiple options to restore their lives. It is one of only 15 sites of its kind in the United States and this project provides many opportunities for students to engage in community-based research that will make a difference in St. Joseph and neighboring counties.

Research Requests:

• Develop and conduct client surveys to determine gaps in service needs

• Develop a marketing plan to assist in the FJC's fundraising activities

• Develop and conduct provider surveys to determine coalition effectiveness and gaps in coordination that the FJC can fulfill

Family Services of Elkhart (Request made in 2008)

Issue: Family Services

Family Services of Elkhart County, Inc., is a multi-program agency serving individuals and families living or working in Elkhart County. Founded in 1948, local citizens perceived a need for an organization to counsel families and individuals and help improve their social, economic, and living conditions.

Research Requests:

Long-term multi-stage project

• Phase I: Determine the approximate size of the population of homeless youths in Elkhart County and provide a literature review to establish the 'state of the art' in providing services for homeless youths, specifically researching what other cities, of similar size and demographic make-up, are doing.

• Phase II: Establish a process to interview homeless youths to find out the types of services that would be most helpful to them

• Phase III: Help to use the above information to help create a program to address youth needs and to generate a community awareness campaign to fund future youth-oriented projects

Forever Learning Institute (Request made in Summer 2007)

Issue: Education

For over 30 years, Forever Learning Institute has offered classes and a lecture series to South Bend students ages fifty and over, hoping to "improve the quality and dignity of thier lives through continuing intellectual challenge, spiritual reflection, and social interaction."

Research Requests:

• Survey the South Bend area for potential community volunteers to teach classes, finally creating a reference guide for the organization
• Create a community-wide survey to determine what types of classes interest most seniors, how much of a deterrent fees pose for activities such as trips to Chicago museums, and how often seniors would be likely to attend classes
• Develop and run a fundraising campaign

Hope Ministries (Request made in December 2008)

Issues: Unemployment, Poverty

Hope Ministries seeks to transform hearts, minds and lives by engaging families and individuals in a Christ-centered, grace-based process of examining their current realities, envisioning their future possibilities, and enabling action to achieve their desired futures. Hope’s mission is to shelter, feed and minister to homeless men, women and families.

Research Requests:

• Create a Capital Campaign
• Conduct a Needs Assessment for the new Men’s Center
• Conduct surveys/focus groups on the barriers residents have to getting employment and how to not make these things be barriers (especially for people with felonies).
• Assess skill sets of residents
• Identify barriers to employment and ways to get around barriers
• Help residents create an action plan
• Conduct research to answer the following: How does someone living in poverty, in this economy, get a job?

South Bend Center for the Homeless (Request made in 2007)

Issues: Education, Housing, Homelessness

The Center for the Homeless has provided more than 700,000 safe nights and over 1.5 million meals to more than 25,000 men, women and children since its opening in December 1988; its focus is on providing not just life-saving, but life-changing services to each of its guests.  The Center's innovative service model offers homeless families and individuals an on-site structured, step-by-step process to achieve and maintain self-sufficiency.  This revolutionary program relies on partnerships with every sector of the community and has been endorsed by the US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD).

Research Requests:

• Develop ideas concerning the creation of a school within the Center which builds upon their current pre-school services and Montessori program.
• Establish a focus group study to examine the reasons why guests do not take advantage of GED opportunities within the Center.  The data, possibly in the form of a survey, could then be used to implement appropriate adult education services to meet client needs.

• Create a tracking system to identify if one population of clients is turned away more frequently than another during the intake process.  This information will help improve their services.
• Conduct a feasibility study to assess the current outreach services to the guests and determine if the Center's services should be offered to guests who do not stay at the Center long enough to complete the regular program.
• Conduct a literature review examining current trends and best practices in the treatment of homeless populations.  Specifically, the "Housing First" trend in services, which seeks housing first before dealing with the causes of homelessness, needs further examination.

St. Adalbert's Catholic Church (Request made in Summer 2007)

Issues: Environmental, Family Services

Located on South Bend's west side, St. Adalbert's is a Catholic parish with a predominantly Latino population. They also operate a pre-K through 8th grade school on the premises.

Research Requests:

• Environmental Projects:
  • Conduct building needs energy assessment and cost analysis to in order to become a "green" church
  • Develop plan for converting abandoned lot adjacent to Sample St. into community garden

• Family financial management:
• How do people in poverty make financial decisions?  What programs or information in areas such as budgeting, financial planning, rent-to-own traps, or payday loans would support fiscal management? 

United Health Services (Request made in 2007)

Issue: Health

United Health Services promotes the vitality of idividual lives through education, direct services, and advocacy.  Committed to the health of the community, they deliver high quality innovative programs, encourage personal responsibility for wellness and seek collaborative solutions to emerging health needs.  United Health Services is the regional coordinator for a Center for Disease Control (CDC) program aimed at increasing breast cancer screenings for lower-income women.

Research Requests:

• Initiate program to identify the under-served women in St. Joseph County.  Questions include:  Who are the rarely or never screened women?  Where do they live?  What are the barriers to getting screened?
• Conduct a literature review with the Diabetes Association and Education Center to address the current knowledge of diabetes and its effects on health in the region. 
• Conduct an effectiveness evaluation with the Diabetes Association identifying differences in patient outcomes in regard to the self-management training protocols and practices that clients receive.
• Evaluate the Early Language Development Program and its Speech Therapy Center.  Questions include:  Does speech therapy lead to increased academic achievement in later years?  What was the outcome of the care sought and provided?
• Develop markting plan to present services to general public.