Lily Alpert
Dr. Lily Alpert is a Senior Researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. Her work focuses on research evidence use by child welfare agency administrators and the development of interventions that promote the adoption and diffusion of longitudinal methods in child welfare performance measurement.
In addition to her research activities, Alpert is an instructor for Chapin Hall and the Center for State Child Welfare Data’s Advanced Analytics for Child Welfare Administration seminar. She is also a founding developer of and instructor for EDGE: Evidence Driven Growth and Excellence, Chapin Hall’s cohort-based, long-term research evidence use training program for child welfare managers. In her technical assistance capacity, she works with child welfare agencies to generate evidence about system performance, interpret that evidence, and apply it to continuous quality improvement efforts.
Alpert earned her PhD in Human Development and Family Studies from the University of Connecticut.
Molly Van Drunen
Molly Van Drunen is a Researcher at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago. She uses mixed-methods approaches to evaluate systems that support children, families, and their communities.
Her work focuses on child welfare systems, with particular emphases on the use of longitudinal data to observe state child welfare outcomes, evidence use and interpretation in a continuous quality improvement context, and time use and fiscal analyses. Recent research work includes an evaluation of the Alameda County Youth Transitions Partnership implementation and a county-administered child welfare system’s time use and cost study. In addition to the above, Van Drunen works with Chapin Hall and the Center for State Child Welfare Data to administer the seminar, Advanced Analytics in Child Welfare Administration.
Van Drunen holds a Master of Arts in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago.
Fred Wulczyn
Dr. Fred Wulczyn is a Senior Research Fellow at Chapin Hall at the University of Chicago and the Director of the Center for State Child Welfare Data. The work of the Data Center is organized around the use of research evidence in public and private child welfare agencies. A core asset of the Data Center is the Multistate Foster Care Data Archive.
The Data Center provides support to more than 20 states across the US and touches broadly on the problem of increasing research evidence use: building opportunity, creating capacity, and increasing motivation. Wulczyn’s work has focused on how states respond to children who are unable to live at home. His contributions to research evidence use focuses on the evidence needed to operate complex systems. In addition, his current work on human capital formation addresses the way policymakers think about child well-being and public investment in children.
After helping to start Chapin Hall in 1985, Wulczyn spent a decade working for the New York State Department of Social Services. During his tenure there, he developed two waiver programs. The Child Assistance Program changed how the state provided financial support to single mothers. The Home Rebuilders Program led to the National Waiver Program, used by more than 30 states to promote innovation.
Wulczyn holds a PhD from the School of Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago.