March 29, 2007
UW to host Partners for Children
Mark Courtney, one of the nation’s leading experts on child welfare has been named executive director of the Partners for Our Children, a new public-private partnership created to improve Washington’s child welfare system.
Partners for Our Children will be headquartered in the UW’s School of Social Work and will bring together a collaboration among the University, the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, civic leaders and philanthropists.
The partnership was launched with more than $12 million in investments, including $10 million from Connie and Steve Ballmer, $1 million from Gov. Christine Gregoire’s supplemental budget and about $1 million in salaries and in-kind operational contributions from the UW.
The new organization will work with foster families, the Legislature and public and private partners and has four main strategies:
- Policy analysis and evaluation, especially aimed at discovering the effectiveness of policies and practices in meeting the needs of vulnerable children and families.
- Funding the development, testing, implementation and dissemination of promising programs and practices.
- Education and training, primarily directed at social work professionals and foster parents.
- Public affairs and communications designed to build support for change, sustainability and success.
“A variety of institutions in the United States and elsewhere have taken on one or more of these objectives, but none has integrated them all into one independent organization,” said Courtney. “Partners for Our Children’s approach is unique and will make us a force for change in practice and policy. It’s this strategy, combined with Washington state’s solid reputation for innovation in the private second and the excellence of the School of Social Work and the university that drew me to the Northwest.
Courtney also will hold the Ballmer Endowed Chair of Child Well-Being in the School of Social Work once he arrives on campus full-time this summer. He’s currently a consultant to the partnership while completing his tenure as an endowed professor of social service administration at the University of Chicago. He is a former director of the Chapin Hall Center for Children at the University of Chicago.
“We are thrilled to have a leader of Courtney’s stature join us,” said Connie Ballmer, Partners for Our Children founder and board chair. “He will lead us by doing both the analysis needed to identify the problems and implementing programs that can improve in out-of-home care. These children in state care are society’s children, our children. They deserve our attention.”
Edwina Uehara, dean of the School of Social Work, said, “As a public university we are deeply committed to serving the citizens of the state of Washington. I am confident that we can bring not only the resources of the School of Social Work, but all of the disciplines at the university to help improve the services provided by the child welfare system, and the thousands of children it serves each year.
