Wendy Wiegmann, MSW, PhD

Email: wendy.wiegmann@berkeley.edu

Wendy Wiegmann is the Project Director for the California Child Welfare Indicators Project (CCWIP), a collaborative venture between the University of California at Berkeley and the California Department of Social Services. The CCWIP provides policymakers, child welfare workers, researchers, and the public with direct access to customizable data on California’s entire child welfare system.

Wendy has many years of experience, having spent the last 9 years with CCWIP and other research projects, analyzing linked and unlinked administrative data to examine a number of different child welfare phenomena. In prior years with CCWIP, Wendy has taken on a number of leadership roles: planning and managing research projects; collaborating with partnered research agencies; supervising aspects of the quality assurance process to ensure the accuracy of the project’s data; presenting data in many formats online, at national conferences, and in print; and serving as a liaison and representative of the project. In addition, Wendy has a number of specialized skills such as analyzing data from large national surveys and using propensity score methods to balance observational data.

Wendy is also a Social Welfare Instructor, teaching courses on Research Methodology and Substance Abuse Treatment for MSW students and introductory social work courses to undergraduates. Prior to her graduate studies, Wendy worked as a Child Welfare Worker in Alameda and San Francisco counties, and has an expert understanding of the policies and practices of public child welfare agencies. Formerly a foster youth and legal guardian to her younger siblings, Wendy uses her personal and professional experiences to inform her work as a researcher.

Wendy’s research interests include reforms in child welfare and juvenile dependency courts, children with siblings in foster care, substance abuse among parents involved with the child welfare system, and improving the efficacy of child welfare services to parents with children in foster care.