Jacquelyn McCroskey holds the John Milner Professorship in Child Welfare and serves as co-director of the Children’s Data Network. Named the 2003 California Social Worker of the Year by the California Chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, she has helped to create and evaluate systems-change initiatives to improve outcomes for families and children in Los Angeles County for more than two decades. Through her work with county, city and school district policymakers and philanthropists, she has investigated interagency collaboration and community partnerships across a broad range of organizations, service areas and settings. She uses data and scholarship, drawing on both qualitative and quantitative methods, to inform policy and guide improvements to government systems that provide child welfare, juvenile justice, and early care and education services.
Her research focuses on the financing and organization of services for children and families, utilization of results and performance measurement, and the efficiency and effectiveness of service delivery systems. As co-director of the Los Angeles-based Children’s Data Network, McCroskey works with philanthropic, government and private sector partners to harness the scientific potential of linked, administrative data to inform children’s programs and policies. She currently serves on the Los Angeles County Commission for Children and Families and Policy Roundtable for Child Care and Development. She also co-leads a team of researchers and government leaders in developing a research agenda and quality-improvement strategy for the new “LA Model” of probation, which is being headed by the county departments of probation, mental health and health services as well as the Los Angeles County Office of Education.
Topics of particular interest include improving outcomes of community-based family-centered services; community-based prevention of child maltreatment; prioritization of services for families involved in the child welfare system; and building linkages between the early care and education and child welfare systems. To reference the work of Jacquelyn McCroskey online, we ask that you directly quote their work where possible and attribute it to "Jacquelyn Mc Croskey, a faculty at the USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work” (LINK: https://dworakpeck.usc.edu)