The Boston Globe: Prof. Collins on Barriers in Child Welfare Policy
Professor Mary E. Collins of BU School of Social Work spoke to The Boston Globe about the missing link between child welfare-related tragedies and policy change. Her expertise brings a high-level perspective to the 2014 murder of 5-year-old Jeremiah Oliver which led to major scrutiny of the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families (DCF) and recently resulted in an arrest.
Excerpted from “A decade later, a murder charge in the Jeremiah Oliver case” (The Boston Globe) by Emily Sweeney, Sean Cotter and Travis Andersen:
Mary Elizabeth Collins, a professor of social welfare policy at Boston University’s School of Social Work who authored a 2017 study on the effects of tragedies, such as Jeremiah’s case, on child welfare policy, said ‘more robust societal supports’ are needed for vulnerable families.
‘My experience with DCF and other child welfare agencies is that they aim to do high quality work, but the nature of the work remains challenging and the agency and its workers are often unsupported more generally,’ Collins said. ‘For each tragedy, new reforms are put in place that may contribute to minor increased protections, but generally cannot address the overwhelming forces in society,’ including poverty, substance use, homelessness, and mental illness.”
Mary Elizabeth Collins, PhD, is an internationally recognized child welfare expert. The author of “Macro Perspectives on Youths Aging Out of Foster Care” (NASW Press, 2015) and more than 90 articles and book chapters, Collins’ research focuses on developing supportive policies and programs for older youth in state systems. Her work has appeared in journals including Journal of Youth Studies, Child Welfare, Journal of Comparative Policy Analysis, and Journal of Social Policy. Collins was a Fulbright lecturer at the University of Social Sciences and Humanities at Vietnam National University in Ho Chi Minh City in 2011-2012, and was awarded a Fulbright specialist award for summer 2023 to work with Songtaba, a women and children’s rights advocacy organization in Ghana.