The University of Maryland School of Social Work (UMSSW) Promise Heights program shared its story this month on a national stage at the invitation of the U.S. Department of Education and the White House.

University of Maryland School of Social Work Center for Restorative Change Director of Strategic Partnerships Oprah Keyes, MSW, LCSW-C, speaks during a virtual panel hosted by the U.S. Department of Education and the White House.

Oprah Keyes, MSW, LCSW-C, director of strategic partnerships at the Center for Restorative Change within UMSSW, spoke during the Oct. 3 edition of the virtual panel series, “Blending and Braiding: How to Make it Easier to Use Different Funding Streams to Meet the Needs of the Whole Child.” Keyes said it was an honor to be asked by the White House and the Department of Education to serve as an inspiration for other Promise Neighborhoods programs.

“I think it was a great opportunity to shine a light on what the Center for Restorative Change and the University of Maryland School of Social Work have been doing around funding,” Keyes said in an interview after the event. “It's something that we've spent many hours worried about and stressed out about. How do we keep our commitment to members of the communities that we're working in? And how do we make this happen in a way that's impactful? I think it causes us to be very creative and very diligent.”

Blending and braiding are terms used to describe how federal money is used with other funding.

“When we say blending, we mean combining funds from multiple sources into a single pot for a common purpose or initiative,” explained Stephen Kostyo, a Department of Education Community Schools and Promise Neighborhood Impact fellow through the Federation of American Scientists, who moderated the event. “When funds are blended, they lose their individual identity, and this means that the blended pot of funds has its own reporting requirements. When we say braiding, we mean coordinated funds from different sources for one purpose or initiative. Braided funding sources keep their specific identity. This means that each of the funding streams maintains their own reporting requirements.”

The discussion offered Keyes a platform to showcase how Promise Heights tackled some of the toughest challenges facing the Upton/Druid Heights neighborhood. Promise Heights was launched in 2012 with a federal Promise Neighborhoods grant, aimed at addressing childhood trauma, academic struggles, and community health through a partnership with select schools in those neighborhoods. As a grant extension sunsets in 2025, Keyes and other leaders at UMSSW are reflecting on how the initiative has evolved over more than a decade.

The ability to blend and braid multiple funding streams, including federal, state, and local resources, has allowed Promise Heights to serve as a catalyst beyond the original scope of the grant to find ways UMSSW can help other organizations create a sustainable community.

“We're able to leverage those different opportunities to really identify those key focus areas within being housed in a School of Social Work,” Keyes said. “Whether that's socially engineered trauma for us in Baltimore, whether that's youth experiencing grief, whether it's the data that came out that there is racial disproportionality in folks who are able to pass the social work licensing exam, and how that impacts students. We've been able to look at those pieces and then look at the funding landscape, particularly federal in the last couple of years, but also state and local, and say, ‘OK, how can we make these pieces fit?’ ”

Keyes emphasized that beyond the U.S. Department of Education support, additional funding from the Department of Justice, the Maryland State Department of Education’s (MSDE) Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, and local philanthropies played a crucial role in sustaining the program.

Data played a crucial role in guiding Promise Heights' work, too. UMSSW and its partners developed dashboards to track key metrics, such as graduation rates, absenteeism, and mental health interventions. These tools allowed the program to adjust strategies in real time, based on the needs of the community.

The results speak for themselves. Promise Heights partner school students who scored proficient or above on the state’s English language arts assessments in 2023 nearly doubled compared to 2019. Students scoring proficient or above on math also tripled in 2023 compared to 2022, when the center assumed leadership of Promise Heights. Graduation rates jumped 22 percent at Renaissance Academy High School in 2023 over the previous year through a combination of efforts including UMSSW’s Positive Schools Center, a program within the Center for Restorative Change.

Building Trust, Shifting the Approach

More than improving graduation rates and reducing absenteeism, Promise Heights transformed how UMSSW approaches community collaborations. The school listened to community organizations and neighbors and learned the school needed to support partners from behind; in other words, helping organizations with grant writing, making them aware of opportunities, or assisting with reporting data and evaluation.

“We’ve been in these communities for a long time, and the feedback we consistently get is that building trust means supporting the community from behind rather than leading from the front,” Keyes said after the event. “Acknowledging that history was critical to our approach.”

One of the standout examples of this shift is the B’more for Healthy Babies program, which trained local mothers and caregivers in Upton/Druid Heights to become community health workers, doulas, and birth aides. By hiring from within the community, the program not only created jobs but also transformed how health information is shared by hearing it from their neighbors.

“This person that's telling [a community member] about breastfeeding and monitoring my blood pressure — I actually go to church with this person, or we go to the same grocery store, or our kids go to the same school. The impact of that is completely different,” Keyes explained.

Preparing for the Future

With the Promise Heights grant set to end in 2025, sustainability has become a central focus for UMSSW to ensure the community thrives when the federal piece sunsets.

“We’re not leaving,” Keyes said. “We want to ensure that the work we’ve done together is not just sustained but continues to grow.”

As an extension of that vision, the Center of Restorative Change opened the Rise Early Learning and Family Support Center this fall at 940 W. Madison Ave. The center is funded by MSDE through the Maryland Family Network as part of the early childhood development pillar under the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future.

Promise Heights and B’more for Healthy Babies has a presence there, in addition to Family Connections, Maryland CASH Campaign, and other local partners. These centers where children through 4 years old can learn and play while their caregivers receive services are called Patty Centers under the state’s Blueprint. This center is taking it a step further by intending to be a licensed day care for the community later this year, offering 24 slots to neighborhood families at no cost.