About This Book

Dr. Rosemary Kennedy Chapin is an award-winning teacher and researcher, possessing extensive program development experience in the social policy arena. After receiving her PhD, she worked as a research/policy analyst for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, where she was involved in crafting numerous long-term care reform initiatives. In 1989, she joined the faculty at the University of Kansas, where she established the Center for Research on Aging and Disability Options (CRADO). CRADO’s mission is improving social service practice and policy for older adults and people with disabilities, particularly those with low incomes. . Her social policy research and strengths-based training initiatives can be viewed at www.crado.ku.edu. Dr. Chapin retired from the University of Kansas in 2018. A prolific author, she is renowned for her work on the strengths perspective, home-and community-based supports and services, and social policy. In 1995, she reformulated basic strengths principles to guide policy practice in an article published in the journal, Social Work (Chapin, 1995). This textbook grew out of that foundational strengths policy practice scholarship. Many of her other research publications have helped shape Medicaid long-term care policy reform. Dr. Chapin has been recognized by many groups at both the state and federal levels for her years of cutting-edge research and advocacy. In 2016, NASW chose her to join the ranks of pioneers in social work honored by the profession. If you would like to learn more about the work of past and present leaders in the field, including Dr. Chapin, do a web search for NASW Social Work Pioneers. She has also been singled out for her pioneering policy practice work by the national organization Influencing Social Policy. Dr. Chapin and her husband have three children and live in Lawrence, Kansas.

Melinda K. Lewis is an Associate Professor of Practice in the School of Social Welfare at the University of Kansas and Associate Director of the School’s Center on Community Engagement and Collaboration. The instructors’ materials for this text were informed by her teaching of foundation and advanced-level MSW social policy and policy practice courses, and she also has years of experiencing advising students and field agencies on policy analysis and policy practice. Melinda spent more than a decade consulting to nonprofit organizations in fields such as safety-net health care, violence prevention, community economic development, immigrant rights, child welfare, and early childhood education. Her practice aims to enhance their strategic communications, advocacy strategy development and execution, and evaluation of social change efforts. Before joining the KU faculty, she worked on policy advocacy and community organizing at the local, state, and federal levels, in pursuit of economic justice and human rights. From 2012-2018, she was Assistant Director of the Center on Assets, Education, and Inclusion, based at the University of Michigan. She co-authored three books examining various aspects of the relationship between wealth inequality and children’s educational outcomes. The most recent, Making Education Work for the Poor: The Potential of Children’s Savings Accounts (2018, with Dr. Willie Elliott), makes the case for financing higher education from universal assets rather than dependence on student debt.