Message from the Dean/Director

The WSU School of School of Social Work is committed to social justice. That commitment to social justice is manifested clearly through the work of the Center for Behavioral Health and Justice (CBHJ). The goal of the CBHJ is to facilitate conversation and data-driven decision-making among community partners interested in reducing or preventing individuals with mental health or substance use disorders from entering the criminal legal system. Partners come from law enforcement, jail administration, courts, community mental health, probation/parole and general health care. Often individuals in these diverse roles have differing responsibilities and experiences in the community. These differing perspectives can be challenging to traverse when finding solutions and limited resources and time do not make the task easier.

The WSU School of Social Work CBHJ team has 'real world' experience working at each of the intersections across the criminal/legal continuum. They understand the multiple perspectives and have listened to the concerns of community partners and worked with them to facilitate solutions by providing cross-system data. The data provides an impetus to assess current cross-system practices and continually monitor the success of new interventions.   

Intervention across all of the criminal/legal intercepts are an important areas of service for social workers. The faculty and staff of the Center look forward to exposing more social work students to these intercept points, expanding their level of expertise to fill these pivotal roles in Detroit and surrounding communities. We look forward to our continued relationships with our current community partners and look forward to new challenges.

Sincerely,

Sheryl Kubiak
Dean and Professor, School of Social Work
Director, Center for Behavioral Health and Justice