I am a Professor of Social Work at the
Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences,
Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio. I am a
teacher, researcher and social work practitioner. I teach
courses in social work
practice (child welfare practice, family interventions, adoption practice and policy) and research
(mostly research practicum at this point). I developed and teach a course on International Travel
and Study in Child Welfare. It offers select students an opportunity to practice social work or
conduct social work research internationally. Together with students and other professionals, I
have explored issues in Romania such as institutionalized children, street children, HIV/AIDS,
domestic violence, domestic adoption, and foster care. In 2000, a team from MSASS worked with the
National Organization for the Prevention of Child Abuse in Belize City, Belize, Central America. In
that project, we met with agencies and key informants around issues of child sexual abuse and
worked on the protocol for program evaluation and research. In addition to these projects with
students, I also traveled to India as part of my sabbatical during Fall 2001 to study Indian
families who had adopted. Reports from projects in Romania and the one in India are located on this
web site.
In addition to my teaching, my research and writing is predominantly in child welfare. My
researching child welfare focuses on two areas:(1) an examination of the institutional care of
children, ways to improve the care of children who must reside in institutions, and the negative
impact on child development from early trauma due to institutionalization; and (2) family, children
and service system issues in domestic, older-child adoption and international adoption.
My interest in the institutional care of children began in the mid seventies when I was working
in a psychiatric residential facility for adolescents. I was keenly aware of the difficulties that
existed for both the children and the staff working with them, focusing on the types of problems
and abuses that can occur when children are cared for out-of-home during extended periods of time.
I was also curious about the role these families played in their children's behavior that resulted
in the children's removal from their home settings, and how these families were virtually ignored
in residential programs. This occupational interest led me into a masters program in social work,
and consequently to a research interest in ways to understand, monitor, and improve the treatment
of children residing in institutional settings. In the early 1990s, I extended this research on
institutional maltreatment into Romania. My ethnic ties are Romanian and when the plight of
children in the "Institutions for the Irrecoverable" first became known, I began to volunteer in
Romania. Since 1991, I have led teams of social workers and social work students into Romania to
provide consultation, training, technical assistance, and conduct research.
My interest in adoption began by growing up in a home with an adoptive brother. My adoptive
brother was the fourth child to join my sibling group of 5 children. He would have been classified
as a special needs child had the term been coined in the sixties. My interest in adoption was
renewed while I was pursuing my doctoral work. In order to supplement my income I was hired by an
adoption agency to conduct home studies of prospective adoptive parents for children with special
needs and to provide supervision to the family after a child was placed for adoption. My first two
cases ended in disruption (i.e., the removal of the child from the adoptive home before
legalization of the adoption). This difficulty was contrary to my experience with my adoptive
brother. This practice experience stimulated my interesting adoption-related research. Initially,
my research started on the difficulty of adoption disruption. Subsequently, when it became apparent
that most older-child adoptions remain intact (over 80%) and do not disrupt or dissolve, I turned
my focus to understanding the intact adoptive family.
Family systems theory, attachment theory, human ecology theory, and child development theories
have guided my research. My vita is one of the files you can access; it will direct you to my
publications in professional journals and my books.
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