General Announcement: Welcoming Dr. Kristen Lwin

We are pleased to confirm that Kristen Lwin, PhD, will be undertaking a research review of the Safeguarding Together implementation with Middlesbrough Council. This will be an independent review to assess the impact of this work and offer opportunities to further embed it for the benefit of the children, families, and practitioners involved.

About Dr. Kristen Lwin

Dr. Lwin is a social worker with over 20 years of experience in social services, child welfare, research and evaluation. She has worked in direct child welfare practice in intake, ongoing services, and children’s services as well as support for victims and witnesses of intimate partner and sexual violence within the criminal justice system. She has served as a frontline worker, researcher and leader in the field of social services. She has been the Executive Director of a knowledge translation organization providing support to child welfare agencies throughout Canada and to building linkages between research and practice in child welfare.

Dr. Lwin is a faculty member at the University of Windsor, where she teaches courses on policy-to-practice application, research methods, and family engagement strategies in child welfare. She is particularly interested in developing effective child welfare curricula that enable students and professionals to practice in an evidence-informed manner.

Research & Publications

Dr. Lwin is a highly respected researcher with numerous peer-reviewed publications exploring decision-making in child welfare, evidence-informed practice, and child outcomes. Her most recent works include:

• A Multilevel Examination of Whether Child Welfare Worker Characteristics Predict the Substantiation Decision in Canada (Journal of Interpersonal Violence, in press)

• Evidence-informed Decision-making Training in Child Welfare: Evaluation of a Proof of Concept (Journal of Evidence-based Social Work, 2022)

• Rethinking evidence-based and evidence-informed practice: a call for evidence-informed decision making in social work education and child welfare practice (Social Work Education, 2022)

What This Means for Middlesbrough Council

Dr Lwin will examine and report on the outcomes of her research project which will include an independent review of the implementation of the Safeguarding Together framework, its impact on practice and outcomes achieved for the organization, its staff and service users. This work will enable ATA Consultancy to independently verify its work and learn from this as it continues to develop and improve. We are very pleased that Dr. Lwin will be undertaking this work.

Next Steps:

• Kristen will begin her review shortly, working closely with our teams.

• Findings and recommendations will be shared in a formal report and presentation later this year.