Nancy Rolock

Nancy Rolock is an Assistant Professor at the Helen Bader School of Social Welfare, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has conducted child welfare research since 1996, with a focus on permanency and post-permanency research. Dr. Rolock is committed to building evidence for what works in child welfare.

Experience

Dr. Rolock is the co-principal investigator for the National Quality Improvement Center for Adoption and Guardianship Support and Preservation that will develop, test, spread, and sustain effective permanency planning and post-permanency services and supports. She is co-PI for a recently-awarded project aimed at recruiting and training families interested in adopting children who have been in foster care the longest in Milwaukee. Dr. Rolock is also co-investigator for the Illinois Birth through Three Federal IV-E Waiver Demonstration that is testing the effectiveness of two child-parent therapeutic interventions for children aged birth to three years old. Dr. Rolock also participates in The Wicked Problems Institutes that brings together social work leaders, administrators and researchers to find innovative ways to bridge the research and practice divide to begin addressing child welfare’s most wicked problems.

Dr. Rolock has researched outcomes for children after adoption and guardianship for over a decade, including serving as a coinvestiagtor on two surveys of caregivers who had adopted or assumed guardianship of children formerly in foster care. Her recent publications include:

Rolock, N. (in press). Post-permanency continuity: What happens after adoption and guardianship from foster care? Journal of Public Child Welfare.

Testa, M.F., Snyder, S., Wu, Q., Rolock, N. & Liao, M. (2014, October 20). Adoption and guardianship: A moderated mediation analysis of predictors of post-permanency continuity. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry. Advance online publication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/ort0000019

Rolock, N., Snyder, S., & Tate, C. (in press). Formative evaluation: A case study of the Illinois birth-to-three IV-E waiver. Journal of Evidence-Based Social Work. doi:10.1080/15433714.2014.899172

Koh, E., Rolock, N., Cross, T. P. & Eblen Manning, J. (2013). What explains instability in foster care? Comparison of a matched sample of children with stable and unstable placements. Children and Youth Services Review, 37, 36-45. doi: 10.1016/j.childyouth.2013.12.007

Jantz, I., Rolock, N., Leathers, S. J., Dettlaff, A. J. & Gleeson, J. P. (2012). Foster care entry: The relationship between county structure, individual characteristics, and the decision to place children in foster care. Child Abuse and Neglect, 36 (11-12), 771-781. doi:10.1016/j.chiabu.2012.08.002

Rolock, N. (2011). New methodology: Measuring racial or ethnic disparities in child welfare. Children and Youth Services Review, 33 (9), 1531-1537. doi:10.1016/j.childyouth.2011.03.017.