Your support today builds a Virtual Clinic which will be used to train students to provide evidence-based trauma-informed services to the millions of individuals who make contact with the criminal justice system every single year in our nation. With more than 600,000 individuals releasing from state and federal prisons and nearly 11 million more cycling through local jails every year and significant geographic and transportation barriers, we must find innovative ways to use technology to enhance both clinical training and service delivery to justice-involved individuals and families.

Your donation will be used on virtual technology which creates the experience of in-person participation when using video streaming services, a private and safe virtual environment to allow clinical student trainees to enhance interaction with justice-involved individual clients, and tools for students to use to engage in service delivery, clinical supervision, and record clinical and research data on the individuals and families with whom they will interact. 

The virtual clinic will provide clinical social work students with:

• In-depth trauma and cultural competency training and develop skills that they can apply throughout their careers to better serve criminal justice system-involved individuals and families.
• The opportunity to deliver mental health services under the supervision of an experienced clinician to deepen their expertise in working effectively with trauma and justice-involved individuals and families and improve their post-graduation employment prospects.
• Real-world experience leading groups and providing individualized treatment services to justice-involved individuals and families.

Specialized trauma-informed mental health and substance use disorder treatment modalities are rarely – if ever – taught through traditional social work curriculum, even at the graduate level. Experiential social work opportunities are needed to allow students to hone their skills and deliver services directly to individuals and families in a supportive environment – enhancing educational outcomes for students, catalyzing thriving among justice-involved individuals and their families in the community, and infusing evidence-based practices into the social work field as students transition into their careers after graduation.  

The Virtual Clinic at Florida State represents a huge innovation in how clinical social work students are trained and allows for the dramatic expansion of service delivery to the thousands of justice-involved individuals with whom we engage in communities across the nation. Our team already delivers in-person, state-of-the-art evidence-based practices to individuals and their family members in eight states; a Virtual Clinic will amplify our efforts and allow us to train dozens of clinical social work students every year to join us in our efforts to bring hope and healing to those who need it most.

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The Institute for Justice Research and Development, or IJRD, is an academic research center in the College of Social Work at Florida State dedicated to improving lives, communities, and institutions by developing and researching innovations that reduce unnecessary reliance on the criminal justice system and by offering solutions that produce equity and prosperity across race, socioeconomic class, and behavioral health status. IJRD delivers services and conducts research with thousands of justice-involved individuals across the nation. We focus on human potential because when people have the opportunity to thrive, the natural extension is healing, a sense of belonging, and increased interdependence and connection, which improves the lives of individuals, our communities, and our nation. Learn more about our active projects here.