Fred Wulczyn Receives Child Welfare Award

Chicago, IL, March 5, 2006 - Chapin Hall Research Fellow Fred Wulczyn received the National Association of Public Child Welfare Administrators' (NAPCWA) 2005 Peter Forsythe Award at the group's spring meeting yesterday. The award is given yearly to a person showing leadership in public child welfare.

Wulczyn, an internationally recognized expert on child welfare policy, has worked with state child welfare leaders from around the country on improving the performance of their child welfare systems and he testifies on child welfare policy frequently before Congress. Wulczyn is co-author of the recently released book Beyond Common Sense: Child Welfare, Child Well-Being, and the Evidence for Policy Reform, now in its second printing. The volume examines the concept of child well-being as an outcome used to monitor child welfare systems.

An expert on research and policy analysis using administrative data - data created and maintained by service agencies - Wulczyn is the principal architect of Chapin Hall's Multi-State Foster Care Data Archive. At Chapin Hall, he directs the Center for State Foster Care and Adoption Data. The Center is widely regarded as providing states with cutting-edge technology for analyzing important child welfare outcomes, projecting system usage, and monitoring efforts to improve the performance of state systems.

According to Chapin Hall Director Mark Courtney, "Dr. Wulczyn has established himself as the leading scholar/practitioner helping public child welfare agencies make the best use of their own data to improve policies and programs for vulnerable children and families. This reward is well deserved."

NAPCWA is an affiliate of the American Public Human Services Association, a nonprofit, bipartisan organization of individuals and agencies concerned with human services. Its members include all state and territorial human services agencies and more than 150 local agencies.

To arrange an interview Fred Wulczyn, please contact Ms. Flora Lazar, public affairs director, at 773-256-5212 or flazar@chapinhall.org.

Chapin Hall Center for Children is a nonpartisan policy research center dedicated to bringing rigorous research and innovative ideas to policymakers, service providers, and funders working to improve the well-being of children. Located at the University of Chicago, Chapin Hall now celebrates twenty years as a leading source of research and expertise about the needs of children and the service systems designed to meet those needs.

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