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Sakia Ayanna Foster, M.S.S. ’16, loved her job working with families at the Department of Human Services (DHS). Still, she wanted to move up the ladder, which she couldn’t do at DHS without a master’s degree. “But I still was paying my undergrad and knew I couldn’t afford to pay it on my own,” she says.

A 2017 National Social Work Workforce Study found that social workers with master’s degrees earn, on average, $13,000 more than those with a bachelor’s. But a 2020 Council on Social Work Education analysis showed that 73.1 percent also had loan debts averaging $47,965.

Since 1995, the Child Welfare Education for Leadership (CWEL) program has been helping to solve this problem. The collaborative effort provides employees of Pennsylvania's public child welfare system with funds to offset the cost of a graduate degree in social work.

“We wanted to upgrade the caliber of the public child welfare workforce … to create change from within,” says Helen Cahalane, principal investigator of the Child Welfare Education and Research Programs at the University of Pittsburgh School of Social Work, which founded and administers CWEL.

The program is available to qualifying students at 13 accredited partner schools in the state. Bryn Mawr was one of the first to join the program. To date, CWEL has graduated 1,726 students, including 128 from Bryn Mawr.

“Many of our CWEL students share with us that if not for the program, they would not have had access to completing a master’s degree at our school or any other school,” says GSSWSR Dean Janet Shapiro.

That was the case for Foster, who was excited to be accepted to Bryn Mawr. The program was prestigious, professors valued her perspective, the network was strong—she even discovered the Baldwin School down the road and sent her daughter there. “It’s changed my life in a lot of different ways,” she says.

CWEL covers tuition and fees, eliminating debt. Full-time students are also given leave from their agency, with 95 percent of their salary covered by CWEL.

“This is an opportunity of a lifetime to be able to come back and get a master’s degree,” Cahalane says, “and for your county agency to support you in taking that leave of absence.

It’s a sacrifice for the child welfare agencies, but one that helps prevent burnout, increase retention, and increase promotions.

“It sparks your fire again,” Foster says. “The work you were doing all along, it helps you put language and theory to it.”

The partnership also benefits the schools. Students study research-based theory and best practices, in turn sharing how those learnings align with their experiences navigating the system and confronting ethical dilemmas. That feedback can influence the curriculum.

For the past two years, Bryn Mawr has also provided a discounted tuition rate to workers from Community Umbrella Agencies that are under the auspices of DHS, but do not have access to CWEL. The College is continually seeking ways to address economic barriers and broaden diversity.

“I just know I wouldn’t be where I am if I hadn’t participated in the program,” Foster says.

One of Foster’s colleagues at DHS who convinced her to go back to school was Khary Atif, M.S.S. ’97, M.L.S.P. ’98. “There are a lot of top folks in the department now, and across the field, that I mentored,” Atif says. “And I convinced many of them to go to Bryn Mawr. I’m very proud of that, for our school. We produce leaders.”