Areas of child welfare research include foster care, adoption, reunification, placement stability, safety, child abuse and neglect recurrence, outcomes for youth aging out of foster care, and in-home family services outcomes--including intersectional influence of race, economics, and ethnicity in each of these areas.

Family and Child Welfare

"The purpose of my scholarship is to build and disseminate knowledge about the child welfare workforce and child welfare services that attempt to infuse a family-centered approach within a largely coercive system of state control.  The child welfare field is in a continual state of change, and building that evidence base requires keeping up with policy and practice changes and using the most rigorous and feasible methodologies possible in field research."
Miriam Landsman

We prepare culturally competent social work scholars and practitioners with a commitment to social justice and social work values and ethics.

The application of these theories and practice approaches to the development, implementation, and evaluation of social welfare policy and practice with vulnerable populations, is a focal point for curriculum, faculty research, and the activities of the National Resource Center for Family Centered Practice (NRCFCP, or simply NRC).

The NRC is a project of the University of Iowa School of Social Work, and has been a leader in family-centered research for more than 40 years. An early pioneer in training for home-based, family-centered child welfare services, the NRC now provides research, training, evaluation, and technical assistance in the areas of child welfare, family support, community and behavioral health, and juvenile justice--across the nation as well as abroad.