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  Susan Mangold and her research team are looking whether the type of funding—not the amount—impacts child-welfare outcomes. Photo: DOUGLAS LEVERE

By CHARLES ANZALONE

Published: February 3, 2010

UB Law School Professor Susan V. Mangold has been selected the leading academic for one of 15 teams accepted for a cooperative research conference sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and National Institute of Mental Health.

The conference, being held Saturday through Wednesday in San Jose, Calif., will bring academic researchers and community administrators together in extensive workshops to examine issues of public health. Mangold, co-director of UB Law’s Program for Excellence in Family Law and an expert in child welfare law, is the lead academic researcher for a group weighing the impact of local funding strategies on child welfare.

The conference, called the NIH/NIMH Community-based Participatory Research Approaches to Sustaining Healthy Families and Multicultural Communities Research Institute, accepted 15 teams—including Mangold’s—from more than 40 proposals seeking sponsorships from the NIH/NIMH.

Mangold will be joined by Crystal Allan, director of the Public Children’s Services Association of Ohio, who will serve as the lead community partner in the research group, and Greg Kapcar, a colleague at the Ohio agency. Also included in the research team is Catherine Cerulli, assistant professor of psychiatry at the University at Rochester and former UB Law faculty member. Roger Ward, representing the State of Ohio, will work with the team via conference calls during and after the February sessions.

“We are looking at whether the type of funding, not the amount, impacts child welfare outcomes,” says Mangold. “Our preliminary findings indicate that local funding with flexibility, reliability and accountability leads to better outcomes.”

Mangold says she and her research team will work to develop a study to test that hypothesis. Child welfare is funded by federal, state and local matching funds. Ohio uses more local funds than any state; 44 of its 88 counties have dedicated tax levies for child welfare services.