Dr Jill Berrick

Profile

Jill Duerr Berrick, MSW, PhD, serves as the Zellerbach Family Foundation Professor in the School of Social Welfare at U.C. Berkeley. She currently serves as the chair of the undergraduate major in Social Welfare at Berkeley. Berrick’s research focuses on the relationship of the state to vulnerable families, particularly those touched by the child welfare system. She has written or co-written 11 books on topics relating to family poverty, child maltreatment, and child welfare services and has written extensively for academic journals. Berrick’s research approach typically relies upon the voices of service system consumers to identify the impacts of social problems and social service solutions in family life. Her newest book, The Impossible Imperative: Navigating the Competing Principles of Child Protection examines child welfare professionals and the morally contentious and intellectually demanding choices they regularly face in their work with children and families.

Research

Publications

• Berrick, J.D., Gilbert, N., & Skivenes, M. (in press). The Oxford Handbook of Child Protection Systems. New York: Oxford University Press
• Berrick, J.D. (2018). The impossible imperative: Navigating the competing principles of child protection. New York, NY: Oxford University Press

Expertise