SWCOS Program Helps Low-Income Families Build Assets

For Immediate ReleaseContact: Patricia Fanning

Phone: 410/706-7946Cell: 443/615-5811

SWCOS Program Helps Low-Income Families Build Assets

The Social Work Community Outreach Service (SWCOS) of the Universityof Maryland School of Social Work has joined with the Maryland Department of Housing and Community Development (DHCD),Community Action Agencies and theMaryland CASH Campaign to place students in fourcounties where they interact with low-income families to help improve the families’ financial wellbeing.

The Maryland Community Fellowsprogram has been funded by DHCD and by Citi, enabling SWCOS to partner with the agencies in Baltimore, Harford, Montgomery, and Carroll counties. Eight UMB students work two or three days a week coaching families in financial literacy and ways to build assets.

Free tax preparation is among the services offered. The program encourages low-income residents to apply for the federal and state Earned Income Tax Credit and other available credits. Fellows who are trained and certified are able to prepare and file tax returns for eligible households.

The Fellows,all first and second-year master’s level students,are being trained in “financial social work,” an emerging field in which the University of Maryland School of Social Work has undertaken a leadership role. In response to the worldwide financial crisis, the School is educating social workers who are prepared to advance the economic stability and financial wellness of individuals and their communities.

“Free tax preparation can save working families up to $400 in costly tax preparation and refund loan fees,” says RobinMcKinney, MSW,director ofthe Maryland CASHCampaign. “Combined with financial education and counseling, these services can help families to become financially secure and to build assets over time.”

“Asset building is an important approach in the poverty fighting tool kit.Too often well intended helpers have focused intently on people’s needs without working from and building on their strengths,” says Dick Cook, MSW,director of SWCOS.“In financial social work, we build wage earners’ and families’ assets through the Earned Income Tax Credit, and through making sure that individuals and families have bank accounts to deposit their assets in.On the community side of our work, we make sure that there are legitimate forms of banking and credit available in all communities.”

The University of Maryland, Baltimore is home to the Dental School, Graduate School, and schools of law, medicine, nursing, pharmacy, public health, and social work. It is the founding campus of the University System of Maryland.

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