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Becky F. Antle, MSSW, PhD (PI on the project) is an Assistant Professor at the Kent School of Social Work University of Louisville. Dr. Antle is the Principle Investigator on a five year grant funded by the U.S. DHHS, Office of Family Assistance, to provide relationship education to high-risk adults and youths in the Louisville area, as well as the Principle Investigator for another five year grant funded by the U.S. DHHS, Administration on children and Families, Children's Bureau, to develop and train child welfare teams on issues of healthy marriage and family formation. Dr. Antle is also the Co-PI on a Children's Bureau grant to provide training on healthy relationships, attachment, and the prevention of adoption disruption to new adoptive families in the public child welfare system as well as the Co-PI on another Children's Bureau grant to develop and deliver team-based training for public child welfare workers on youth transitioning to independent living. She has previously served as a PI or a Co-PI on a number of other state and federal grants including the governor's Early Childhood Intervention Program Kids Now, the Child Welfare Training Assessment Project, the Cancer as a Chronic Disease grant funded by the Centers for Disease Control, the Family Support Training Assessment Project and an evidence-based practice grant for the treatment of schizophrenia funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. For the past ten years Dr. Antle has been involved in research on solution-based child welfare practice, the impact of domestic violence on children, comorbidities of child maltreatment, and the professional development of the child welfare workforce.

Bibhuti K. Sar, MSW, PhD, (Co-PI) currently heads the Credit For Learning Project (CFLP) which serves the Cabinet for Health and Family Services, Department for Community Based Services, Training Branch as they train new child welfare workers. Dr. Sar teaches and chairs the curriculum in the areas of human diversity, children and families, and research methods and applications in the masters program. He has expertise in curriculum development and integrating training and graduate curricula. Curriculum in the area of teaching human diversity and research ethics developed by him have been selected as models for inclusion in the Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) series on resources for educators. His management experience includes being PI or CO-PI on twelve 12 grants/contracts.

Dana Christensen, PhD (Co-PI) currently serves as Director of the Center for Family Resource Development at the University of Louisville and as Professor in the Kent School of Social Work. He holds a doctorate in Marriage and Family Therapy and is a Clinical Member and Approved Supervisor of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. Dr. Christensen has worked closely with many state agencies assisting them in their efforts to improve their case assessment, case planning, and case management practices. He has also worked closely with mental health treatment providers in developing practices that facilitate working partnerships with child protection, school services, and juvenile justice agencies. He has provided training and evaluation services for the NP organization for many years.

Riaan van Zyl, Ph.D (Evaluator) will assist the PI in the evaluation of the project. Dr. van Zyl is Professor and Associate Dean for Research at the Kent School of Social Work. He oversees $4 million dollars in external funding and provides leadership to 12 research projects and serves as evaluator on eight. Dr. van Zyl has published 40 articles in peer-reviewed journals and contributed a number of chapters to books. He has extensive knowledge and expertise in program and training evaluation as well as scale development and creating change in social service systems. When in South Africa, he developed a Youth Prison for President Mandela, at the personal request of Mandela, to create a humane environment for youth with rehabilitative services built into the prison itself and in the form of aftercare after their release from prison. He also wrote health as well as human services policy in numerous areas including gerontology and HIV-AIDS while in South Africa. Thus, his experience working with large systems will be invaluable.

Anita P. Barbee, MSSW, Ph.D. (Evaluator) Dr. Barbee received her Ph.D. in Social Psychology with an emphasis in Child Development and Family Studies in 1988 from the University of Georgia and her MSSW in 2001 from the University of Louisville. Her field placement involved working as a front line child protective services worker on the Medically Fragile Team in Jefferson County. She is a Professor and Distinguished University Scholar at the Kent School of Social Work at the University of Louisville. She has evaluated child welfare training in the Commonwealth of Kentucky since 1992 and the Governors Early Childhood Intervention Program: Kids Now since 2000. She developed a Dating Violence Prevention Educational Program entitled KRUSH- Keeping Relationships Upbeat, Safe and Healthy in collaboration with the Junior League of Louisville, the Kentucky Shakespeare Festival and the Community Foundation of Louisville that is now being delivered in high schools across Kentucky. She has also conducted dozens of experimental and quasi-experimental studies, and 5 demonstration projects with an evaluation component. She has over 65 publications in professional journals and over the past 15 years has had 61 grants funded totaling over 12 million dollars.

Dana Sullivan, MSW, Ph.D. (Faculty Advisor) is an Assistant Research Professor at the University of Louisville. She has worked as an Investigator or Co-PI on the Child Welfare Training Assessment Grant and Family Support Training Assessment Grant, both of which comprehensively measure training evaluation, for the state of Kentucky for the past five years. She mentors and advises child welfare workers who are enrolled in the Kent School of Social Work as part of Kentuckys Credit for Learning Program and has supervised students conducting research in a drug and alcohol treatment practicum placement. Prior to working for the University of Louisville, she worked for nine and a half years in the fields of mental health, substance abuse prevention and child welfare. During this time, she supervised clinical staff providing service coordination for children with severe emotional disturbances. She worked in substance abuse prevention for three years as a youth programming specialist, providing training to college, high school, middle school, and elementary school students. She also coordinated the Teen Leadership Conference serving approximately 300 high school students and their sponsor and served as staff on the Kentucky State Teen Leadership Conferences for 3 years. She is a Certified Prevention Professional in the state of Kentucky. Dr. Sullivan will assist with the youth training program and supervise the students hired by the project.

Shannon Frey, MSW (Research Manager) received her Bachelors Degree in Government from Centre College in Danville, KY in 1992. She then moved to Louisville where she served as a VISTA (Volunteers in Service to America) Volunteer at the Volunteers of America Family Emergency Shelter and assisted with the Follow-Up program for homeless families. Realizing her passion for social work, Shannon decided to pursue a graduate degree. She earned her M.S.W. in 1995 from the University of Michigan. Following graduation, Ms. Frey moved to Colorado where she was a caseworker with Arapahoe County Social Services for 4 years, working primarily with children with developmental disabilities. She also has experience working with children with significant emotional disorders. Shannon is currently a research manager with the University of Louisville Kent School of Social Work. She helped facilitate the evaluation of KIDS NOW (Kentucky Invests in Developing Success), an early childhood initiative aimed at bolstering early care and education across the state of Kentucky for six years. She currently coordinates the Healthy Marriage and Family Formation federal grant that is based at the Kent School as well as the Louisville Relationships grant, aimed at providing healthy communication skills to low income individuals.

Pam Ratcliffe, CSW (Research Manager) obtained her Masters degree from the Carver School of Church Social Work in Louisville. She has extensive professional experience in the field of therapeutic foster care and adoption. Pam's first position with the Kent School was as co-director of the FORECAST assessment clinic. The clinic provided multi-disciplinary psycho-social assessments on families referred by the Cabinet for Families and Children. In the past year, Pam's primary responsibilities involved coordinating data collection for the Professional Development Framework Research Collaborative, a three year grant funded by the Administration for Children and Families. Currently, she shares her time between three grants, each involving relationship enhancement for couples. Pam provides training on healthy relationships for foster and adoptive families, provides clinical support for the Louisville Relationships grant, and coordinates program activities/training for the Post Adoption Services grant. Pam will assist the PI on this grant by providing clinical support for the Facilitators and she will also work to develop training refresher courses as well as help to ensure training fidelity.

Althea Dryden, MA (Research Manager) is a Research Manager at the Kent School of Social Work. She has worked with the National Resource Center on Child Welfare Training and Evaluation responsible for the daily operations of the NRC which include communicating with the research faculty and staff as well as the National Advisory Board, coordinating data for two national surveys and collaborating with colleagues on various other research projects. She is a proud member of the Kent School Diversity Committee. Althea has a Masters degree in African American Studies from The Ohio State University and is currently pursing a Masters in Women's and Gender Studies from UofL. Althea will assist the PI on this grant by helping to execute the Love U2 training with the youth over the course of the next 5 years.