Julie Collins is an accomplished social work professional with more than 40 years of experience in the fields of child welfare, mental health, substance abuse, and managed care.
She came to CWLA to capitalize on her expertise in these areas, where she has focused on providing training and technical assistance to public and private child welfare-related agencies around cross-systems collaboration in child welfare, in particular with mental health and child abuse and neglect prevention; program and organizational assessments; program and system reform and transformation; the identification of best practices; and the preparation for and implementation of evidence-informed and evidence-based programs and practices.
Ms. Collins is currently leading CWLA’s work to update its nationally and internationally recognized Standards of Excellence, which establish best practices across the spectrum of child welfare-related services. This effort includes the creation of a new framework for outcome-based workload/caseload standards with the input of leadership from the state and county levels of public child welfare agencies as well as their nonprofit providers and other key stakeholders.
She is involved in providing technical assistance to states, counties, and providers around the Family First Prevention Services Act (FFPSA) through her consultation and technical assistance work with the Building Bridges Initiative, which focuses on quality residential interventions and supports the states’ efforts to prepare their providers to meet the Qualified Residential Treatment Program requirements, as well as her CWLA-specific work on FFPSA. Ms. Collins is CWLA’s lead investigator on a policy research grant from the William T. Grant Foundation, recently awarded to the University of Georgia to conduct an analysis of the early implementation of FFPSA as part of a larger research project to determine the unintended consequences of this legislation for families of color.
Her role as CWLA’s project director for FRIENDS National Center for Community-Based Child Abuse Prevention (one of the HHS, Children’s Bureau technical assistance resource centers) over the 10 years of the contract allowed her to work with various levels of the federal government as well as the state lead agencies and their grantees around effective collaboration in the prevention of child abuse and neglect and child welfare for improved outcomes for children and families; best practices for effectively engaging and working with diverse populations at risk of child abuse and neglect, including tribes; and effective ways of funding to sustain these prevention programs.
Her prior experience at ValueOptions (formerly known as Options, Inc.) allowed her to develop skills in designing and implementing responsive and culturally appropriate clinical programs, benefit packages, and models of care delivery for both mental health/substance abuse and child welfare-related services for children, adults, and families for the military as well as at the state and county level in many parts of the country.
An accomplished author, Ms. Collins has written or edited numerous articles, journals, book chapters, monographs, and e-learning courses on child welfare and mental health and managed care-related topics, including trauma-informed care and secondary traumatic stress. She is often sought after to sit on advisory committees and currently serves on the Quality Improvement Center (QIC) for Domestic Violence and Child Welfare National Advisory Committee. Ms. Collins previously served on the former QIC for Research-Based Infant-Toddler Court Teams National Advisory Committee and on an expert panel to provide input to the Assistant Secretary on Planning and Evaluation at HHS regarding the issues surrounding prenatal alcohol and other drugs and where they should be focusing their research going forward. She has more than 20 years of experience providing expert input into the child and family services accreditation standards of the Commission on Accreditation of Rehabilitation Facilities (CARF), Council on Accreditation, and The Joint Commission that are used in the United States and internationally. She is involved with the CARF International Advisory Council.
Ms. Collins earned her master’s degree in social work in social administration and policy from the University of Ottawa and a Bachelor of Arts degree in psychology from McMaster University in Canada. She is also a licensed clinical social worker in Virginia. She has worked in both Canada and the United States.