Development of a Multitenant Virtual Reality Platform for Increasing Awareness of Implicit Bias in Child Welfare DecisionMaking A Public Health Crisis
Project Abstract:
Children of color continue to be disproportionally represented in foster care and experience significantly worse outcomes when involved with the child welfare system eg mental health physical health etc This project will develop test and rollout a novel platform that will be used as a catalyst for addressing the longstanding disparity in child welfare by preparing current and future child welfare practitioners with interactive and realtime virtual environments to increase their awareness of implicit biases Identified as unconscious attributes that are often given to members of marginalized social groups implicit biases have been identified as problematic contributors that negatively influence decision making in professional practice Moreover workforce turnover in child welfare remains a national problem Families often experience a revolving door of unseasoned professionals who have inherited a large caseload face significant job stress and are subject to inadequate training systems that ineffectively prepare them to recognize and overcome these unconscious biases in the course of their work duty Furthermore by undergoing this training and brining awareness to the inherent biases the platform will help train case workers to mitigate their biases when working with clients Given the health disparities that will continue if an intervention is not implemented this project is critical to implement in order to mitigate this public health crisis A multitenant virtual reality platform will be implemented to train child welfare professionals to be aware of implicit biases they may hold and help them through virtual practice environments that are simulated to mimic reallife scenarios to develop strategies to mitigate their biases The initial customers are national state and private child welfare services and educational institutions Other customers include educators healthcare professionals social services and criminal justice entities Information generated through the virtual reality trainings will be used to reduce implicit biases and improve the decisionmaking process of professionals Deliverables for this funding tranche will include a base version of the virtual simulation application access to digital manuals scripts and training videos that will be compatible with multiple virtual reality headsets current recommendation is the Oculus Quest v2 Support materials and training will be available via a website The initial software upgrades and addons will be cloud based and tied to each client login With future funding additional scenarios will be developed so customers can increase educational training by purchasing addon application packs The interdisciplinary team is comprised of individuals with backgrounds in computer science engineering design user experience and advertising XR Lab Team child welfare and diversity equity and inclusion LCCWEAR Team who have come together to build an innovative platform to address this child welfare topic and resulting public health crisis The team and technology are being supported by Kentucky Commercialization Ventures the WKU Center for Research and Development and the Small Business Accelerator Program to develop a business model for the product and to provide appropriate intellectual property protection
