Susan J. Wells
Gamble-Skogmo Professor in Child Welfare and Youth Policy
Dr. Wells has a unique combination of experience in child welfare practice, policy analysis, research and education. She was a child welfare worker in Peoria, Illinois from 1972-75, provided policy analysis, technical assistance and training while at the Region IX Child Welfare Training Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, and has conducted research in child welfare practice and policy since she completed her NIMH fellowship in 1983.
American Bar Association - She began her work in research with the American Bar Association Center on Children and the Law in 1983 and continued working with the Center in a variety of roles until 1994. She served as Director of Research for the Center from 1989 to 1994. While with the American Bar Association, Dr. Wells conducted numerous studies and provided technical assistance in a variety of areas. Her 1985 handbook on child welfare work decision-making was the Center's best selling publication for many years. She was also Principal Investigator of the nation's largest study to date of the social worker's decision to investigate a report of abuse or neglect. In addition, she provided technical assistance to states in developing child death review teams; studied background screening and records checks for child care professionals, examined justice system processing of child abuse cases and worked for the City of New York on developing a system to match children to placements and to evaluate the quality of foster care placements.
Research Triangle Institute - After going to the Research Triangle Institute in 1994 as a program director for child welfare studies, Dr. Wells consulted on and conducted a series of studies of the child protective service system and the child welfare system of the State of North Carolina. She continued her work for the City of New York and developed a project to design and produce a method for evaluating kinship foster care.
University of Illinois - Upon her arrival at the University of Illinois in 1996, she directed the Children and Family Research Center. The Center produced numerous products in a variety of areas, including a Child Welfare Research Agenda for the State of Illinois, instruments for measuring the quality of foster care and kinship foster care, a series of evaluations of the state's Child Endangerment Risk Assessment Protocol, and guidelines for administrators seeking to use outcome measures in child welfare services. In 1999, Dr. Wells became Chair of the Child Welfare Specialization for the School of Social Work at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She continued to publish the results of her work and developed, with her colleagues, a handbook and reference text for social service professionals on performing outcome evaluations of family support and family preservation programs.
University of Minnesota - Dr. Wells joined the faculty at the University of Minnesota's School of Social Work in 2001 as the Gamble-Skogmo Land Grant Chair in Child Welfare and Youth Policy. She continues to write and research in the area of child welfare and teaches an advanced class, Social Policy and Delivery Systems for Child Welfare and Family Services. Currently, Dr. Wells has undertaken a project, funded by the University's Office of the Dean of the Graduate School, to study the effectiveness of child protection services, especially the intersection of evidence-based practice and cultural competence; she is concluding a project, which was done for the African American Disparities Committee of the Minnesota Department of Human Services (MN DHS), to investigate the overrepresentation of African American children in foster care. Recently, she completed a study exploring child welfare case typologies, associated worker activities and case outcomes to identify clusters of characteristics that more closely approximate the complexity of cases seen in the field; and a MN DHS Results Initiative conducted in cooperation with Hennepin County to investigate reasons for re-entry into care. In 2003 Dr. Wells was honored as a Distinguished Alumna by the State University of New York at Albany. She was a recipient of the School of Social Work's Excellence in Discovery Award in 2004.
Project Funders - Funders of projects conducted by Dr. Wells have included the United States Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS) Administration for Children and Families; the New York City Administration for Children, Youth and Families; the U.S. Department of Defense; the U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention; the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; the Minneapolis Foundation and a number of states including Illinois, Pennsylvania, Nebraska, Colorado, and North Carolina.
Education -
1982-83 Post-Doctoral Fellow in Psychiatric Epidemiology Johns
Hopkins
University School of Hygiene and Public Health
1982 PhD, University of Southern California School of Social Work
1975-76 Post Master's Certificate in Social Work Education, Tulane
University
1972 MSW, State University of New York at Albany
1968 BA, Pennsylvania State University
