Tina Rzepnicki

Tina Rzepnicki, a distinguished scholar of social work practice, is director of the Center for Social Work Practice. She is principal investigator of the Program Practices Investigation Project with the Office of Inspector General of the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. Rzepnicki is currently evaluating the impact of task-centered intervention training delivered to more than 60 employees of the Teen Parent Services Network that covers the greater Chicago area. Collaborating with colleagues from the University of Minnesota, the evaluation will measure changes in job performance of direct service staff and their supervisors. In addition, she recently piloted the application of root cause analysis to errors in decision making in human services, particularly errors that result in severe injury or death of a child.

Widely published in the area of child welfare and social work clinical practice, she has co-authored four books and most recently co-edited, with Harold Briggs, the volume Using Evidence for Social Work Practice: Behavioral Perspectives (Lyceum Books, 2004), in which she also authored several chapters.