The Child Welfare Program Area addresses the needs of children who have been or who are at risk of being abused or neglected, placed in foster care, or adopted. They focus on how child welfare and collaborative agencies are structured, funded, and administered; the policies and services implemented to address families’ needs; and how interaction with child welfare agencies affects the well-being of children and families. Through research and technical assistance, they seek to inform policy makers and improve front-line practice.
The successful candidate will be responsible for planning and executing major social science research projects or evaluations in consultation with other colleagues and/or other organizations. She or he will design research approaches; lead others to perform analysis; write and present reports; and draw policy inferences. She or he will be responsible for developing new opportunities and writing proposals, then serving as a principal investigator or project director for those projects.
Typical Duties and Responsibilities:
- Serves as principal investigator or project director for multiple research or evaluation studies.
- Builds a line of work within the organization that supports a team of researchers that includes leading teams to write proposals, conceptualize work, and negotiate and draft budgets.
- Supervises the data collection, tabulation, and analysis by research scientists, analysts and assistants.
- Conducts site visits, interviews with public officials, and supervises field research.
- Leads the interpretation of data from policy and program perspectives.
- Provides quality control on all products and project management within the team.
- Serves as a supervisor and mentor for research staff.
- Writes papers, briefs, and other publications.
- Presents results to clients and stakeholders and presents testimony to policymakers.
- Disseminates/responds to public information requests from reporters, Congress, and researchers.
Experience and Education:
- 10+ Years of experience in child welfare, doing similar work, with increasing responsibilities;
- Demonstrated thought leadership within the field of child welfare; individual must have made a significant contribution through her or his research to the field, policy, or program practices;
- Extensive experience writing and winning proposals, ideally from both government and foundation funders;
- Extensive experience with and understanding of federal government contracting;
- Expertise in designing evaluations and research studies, including leading randomized controlled trials and overseeing multivariate quantitative analyses and mixed methods approaches;
- Experience conducting causal analysis for non-experimental designs (e.g., propensity score matching, regression discontinuity, instrumental variable design);
- A PhD in relevant field; a Master’s degree or other relevant degree may be considered with substantial relevant experience;
- Proven skills at management of a research team (consistent on-time, within budget work);
- Demonstrated communications achievements (e.g., notable research papers, effective white papers).
No application deadline given