Colleen Henry is a child welfare scholar and an expert in child and family policy. She is an Honorary Fellow at the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Edinburgh, and previously served as an associate professor (tenured) and chair of social policy at the Silberman School of Social Work at Hunter College, part of the City University of New York.
Dr. Henry’s mixed-methods research leverages administrative data to explore, document, and better understand front-end child welfare policy and practice and state intervention in family life. She is the principal investigator for the Child Abuse & Neglect Registry Project, which examines the policies, procedures, and practices governing child maltreatment registries in the United States, as well as the consequences of registry listing for children and families.
She has worked with several UC Berkeley research groups to improve child welfare research and practice, including projects at the California Child Welfare Indicators Project, the California Social Work Education Center, and the Mack Center, where she served as project coordinator and later Co-PI for the Child Welfare Qualitative Data Mining Project.
Dr. Henry earned both her MSW and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. After completing her MSW, she worked as a social worker in California’s public child welfare system before returning to graduate school.
