Dr. Trudy Festinger Receives CSWE Child Welfare Track's Career Achievement in Child Welfare Award

The Council on Social Work Education (CSWE) Child Welfare Track conferred The Career Achievement in Child Welfare Award on Silver School Associate Dean for Research Dr. Trudy Festinger during CSWE’s 62nd Annual Program Meeting. The award recognizes her more than 50 years of leadership and research, which have directly influenced child welfare policy as well as practice in child welfare settings.

Dr. Festinger, who joined the Silver School faculty in 1971 and served as a Professor of Research from 1976 to 2016, is perhaps best known for her transformative research in the fields of foster care and adoption. Among her many significant studies were a major follow-up study of “aging out” youth discharged from foster care; studies of adoption disruption of children with special needs, and factors related to reentry in foster care; two evaluations of child adoption procedures in New York City; vision diagnostics among foster children; the post-adoption status of children; and issues in the measurement of emotional abuse.

She has authored more than forty publications on child welfare topics, is a past member of the editorial board of the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, and is presently an ad hoc reviewer for that publication as well as Children and Youth Services Review, Social Services Review, Journal of Social Work Education, Journal of Public Child Welfare, and Journal of Clinical Social Work.

It is fitting that Dr. Festinger’s peers have recognized her tremendous contributions to child welfare with this career achievement award.