Belinda Hardy, LCSW, MPA, has been named the associate director of the UT-Boling Center for Developmental Disabilities at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Hardy is a licensed clinical social worker and has been employed at the Boling Center as the chief of social work since 1996.
“Belinda brings a wealth of supervisory, program development, and clinical skills to this leadership position,” said Bruce Keisling, PhD, executive director of the Boling Center. “She was instrumental in developing several long-standing programs at our center, including the state’s largest relative caregiver program and a multi-county support program for parents with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”
A graduate of the University of Tennessee College of Social Work, Hardy has worked in the fields of medical social work, developmental disabilities, corrections, and mental health services. She is an adjunct faculty member in the College of Social Work at the University of Memphis, and serves on the board of the Memphis Center for Independent Living.
The Boling Center began as a specialty clinic in 1957, and became one of the original 19 university-based disability centers funded by the Kennedy administration. It is part of a national network of university programs supported, in part, by the federal government to facilitate the flow of disability-related information and best practices between the community and university. There are 67 University Centers of Excellence in Developmental Disabilities across the 50 states and U.S. territories that work with people with disabilities, members of their families, state and local government agencies, and community stakeholders.