From Student to Innovator

Vania Buck is thinking big about the future of child welfare. “We’re facing a lot of challenges with retention and recruitment, and I think building new kinds of systemic support can really make an impact.” It’s a major task, but Vania isn’t intimidated. In fact, with a Title IV-E-funded Master of Social Work (MSW) under her belt, a doctorate in progress, and an innovative course on the books at Chico State, she’s already leading the charge. 

Vania earned her first degree in psychology from San Diego State University in 2014. Shortly after graduating, she began working at a Level 14 group home in Chula Vista. Designed to support youth with extremely complex psychiatric needs who might otherwise end up in juvenile detention, Level 14 homes are challenging environments for even the most seasoned social service workers.

The pressures of the work turned out to be revealing. “I didn’t know anything about social work back then,” Vania recalls. But drawing on her background in psychology, she was quick to note a disconnect between the clients she was tasked with supporting and the complex administrative processes in which they were engaged. 

“I was taking my kiddos to court and I would ask them, ‘Hey, do you know what court is about today?’ And they’d say to me, ‘I don’t know, I just show up like my social worker.’” This lack of understanding didn’t sit well with Vania. “These kiddos were 13 and over, almost adults, and they were supposed to have a say in their court proceedings.” It was then that Vania decided that she wanted to play a role in fostering deeper, more productive connections between social workers and their clients. 

Finding a Passion for Research

Her first step was accepting a new position as a bilingual protective services worker with County of San Diego Child Welfare Services, where she got a close-up look at the challenges that families face when accessing vital services. She could sense right away that to tackle these challenges head on, she’d need to deepen her knowledge of the field. Luckily, it wasn’t long before she caught wind of something called Title IV-E. 

“As a first-generation student, I didn’t even know what grad school was. But in talking to other folks at work, I learned what grad school was and also what Title IV-E was: it was this program that would help you pay for a master’s degree in exchange for work at a child welfare agency.” 

Vania was quick to connect the dots. “I thought, ‘I’m already doing the work and I would love to further my education. I knew I wanted to pursue more senior positions in leadership and supervision, and the MSW was a way of opening those possibilities.’” Soon, with the support of a Title IV-E stipend, Vania was pursuing a Master of Social Work at Chico State, enriching her knowledge of social work practice through coursework and mentorship focused specifically on child welfare. 

I knew I wanted to pursue more senior positions in leadership and supervision, and the MSW was a way of opening those possibilities.

Vania Buck

Vania didn’t just gain new skills. In the course of completing her degree, she also unlocked a new passion for research. Building on her own experiences serving clients in both English and Spanish and drawing on interviews with social workers from every corner of the state, Vania completed a thesis project examining the experiences of bilingual child welfare social workers in California. 

From translating specialized terminology and court documents to teaching families how care systems work, Vania found that bilingual workers offer a wide range of vital child welfare services. But her research also showed that this work is often under-resourced, with individual workers putting in extra hours and emotional labor to ensure that clients who are not proficient in English get the specialized services and support they need.

Becoming a Changemaker

When Vania returned to social work practice after finishing her MSW, she saw these patterns play out first-hand. “We were requesting that [our clients] abide by a case plan, but they literally weren’t able to find a therapist who speaks their language. And what does that look like in the plan? It looks like they’re not meeting their goals.”

She was determined to make a change. While keeping up with her agency duties, Vania designed a course titled Bilingual Social Work in Child Welfare and pitched it to her colleagues in the School of Social Work at Chico State. Chico added the course as a pilot program and began enrolling students. It was an immediate hit and has since been turned into a permanent offering.

We were requesting that [our clients] abide by a case plan, but they literally weren’t able to find a therapist who speaks their language.  

Vania Buck

“We run some class sections fully in Spanish so we can practice our language and communication skills, and we bring real-world scenarios from our internships and jobs and discuss how we should approach them,” says Vania. “How do we talk about sexual abuse in Spanish while respecting the culture? What are best practices when translating for law enforcement?”

A Vision for the Future

Now pursuing a doctorate in Social Welfare at the University of Washington, Vania is busy sharing her work with the child welfare community across the country and imagining a future where robust support for bilingual social workers, students and families is standard practice. 

“My goal would be for every single IV-E school to have some course or training of this kind to support their bilingual/bicultural students, and also to have this type of training for all IV-E students, regardless of whether they’re bilingual, so they can better understand how to support different types of families in the child welfare system.”

From first-generation student to educational innovator, Vania’s journey is a perfect example of how the Title IV-E Education Program drives change in California’s child welfare system. Bridging professional practice, scholarly research, and innovative training and education, Vania is building a better future for child welfare professionals and families alike. 

To Learn More

The California Title IV-E Education Program is co-administered by UC Davis CPE Human Services and UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs. This statewide partnership strengthens California’s public child welfare workforce by providing financial support and professional education to social work students across 20 universities.