Dr. Andrew Winters
Assistant Professor
Dr. Winters research agenda advances the field of Social Work by addressing two focal areas:
- increasing equity within child-serving systems and
- improving workforce and organizational capacity within child-serving systems. His current scholarship demonstrates a strong commitment to improving youth-serving service delivery systems, which are influential in reducing adverse outcomes among structurally disadvantaged young people. During his time at the Kent School, he has worked on a breadth of research projects focused on improving youth outcomes, strengthening youth development practices at youth-serving organizations, challenging oppressive service delivery systems, and critically evaluating organizational practices in child welfare. He is currently working on two community-based research projects.
Dr. Winters is the Principal Investigator on a study evaluating an intervention to address substance use concerns among child welfare involved parents or guardians. The Volunteers of America Mid States in partnership with the Kentucky Department for Community Based Services implemented a novel intervention co-locating a behavioral health clinician into three child welfare office spaces. The evaluation of the intervention is three-fold: To assess child welfare outcomes, research partners will utilize administrative data to compare overall rates of out-of-home care placement and reunification time among families between three intervention and three comparison sites. To assess workforce outcomes, research partners will conduct survey research and focus groups in the intervention and comparison sites; and to assess fidelity to the intervention, the research team will evaluate compliance with defined fidelity markers.
Dr. Winters is also the Co-Principal Investigator on a study exploring facilitators and barriers to intra-and interagency child welfare screening for trauma and behavioral health needs, and behavioral health functional assessment processes to understand what is contributing to compliance and practice issues. The research team is currently conducting a retrospective administrative data analysis, obtaining state level data to descriptively examine the relationship between screening, assessment and treatment and child welfare outcomes of safety, permanency, and well-being. The research team will also conduct focus groups with child welfare staff and behavioral health providers centering on the commonality of the experiences of the participants as they relate to screening and assessment practices in promoting youth outcomes.