Overview

HPPAE Goals

The HPPAE (formerly the "Practicum Partnership Program-PPP") was founded on the belief that the most effective way to train qualified social workers to meet the demands of America's aging population is to build strong partnerships between academia and the community agencies that serve older adults. These university-community partnerships ensure that social work education is more inclusive of and responsive to the evolving needs of older adults who are transforming our traditional notions of long-term care.

The primary goals of the HPPAE model are:

• Train and prepare the next generation of geriatric social workers to meet the growing and evolving demands of America's older population.
• Increase interest in aging as a field of practice among students.
• Increase the ranks of well-qualified geriatric social workers.

The HPPAE is meant to complement your existing geriatric education program; it does not require "reinventing the wheel." All MSW programs already feature a field education model. The HPPAE is often an innovative improvement upon this model, taking into account the trends and changes in the field of aging that require social workers to be more familiar with, and skilled at, navigating the different health-care and social-service systems available to older adults. In the following sections, we will go into more detail about the key components that make up the HPPAE model. Currently in 72 graduate schools in 33 states, the HPPAE has proved to be a successful model to recruit students in aging.