Associate Professor
University of Texas at Arlington
Dr. Catherine LaBrenz is an associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington School of Social Work. Prior to academia, Dr. LaBrenz worked in Latin America with families involved in child welfare systems. She earned a B.A. in Spanish and Sociology from the University of Michigan, an M.S.W. from the Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, and a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.
Dr. LaBrenz's research is informed by her practice experiences and focuses on supporting families involved with child welfare. The underlying goal of Dr. LaBrenz's research is to empower families and communities to build resilience and break cycles of maltreatment. She has three specific areas of research that connect to the larger research goal: 1) leveraging big data to examine family and contextual factors that contribute to maltreatment; 2) developing and evaluating initiatives, policies, and practices to improve outcomes for child welfare-involved children and families; and 3) developing and piloting trainings to strengthen family engagement among child welfare practitioners. Guided by ecological and critical perspectives, all three lines of research understand child maltreatment as stemming from an intersection of systemic, contextual, and family factors that require multi-pronged approaches.
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