Mayo Children's Initiative

Context

Mayo Children's Initiative (MCI) plans to implement a prevention/early intervention service over a 5 year period with strong service design, and evaluation of progress and results a central feature. This is a staged and rolling process incorporating several elements including design of individual services, manual development, evaluation specification, evaluation commissioning, and review of results.

To ensure best practice standards, MCI is supported by an Expert Advisory Committee (EAC) who provide independent advice and oversight to the process.

The EAC comprises 3 members with combined relevant international and national expertise in research design, service design, evaluation, and children's services provision and policy.

They are Mark Dynarski, Cris Sullivan and Stephanie Holt.

Mark Dynarski, U.S. expert made available to projects by Atlantic Philanthropies.

Mark Dynarski is vice president and director of Mathematica's Center for Improving Research Evidence. He also directs the What Works Clearinghouse for the Institute of Education Sciences of the U.S. Department of Education. Dynarski is a nationally recognized expert in econometrics and evaluation methodology, including the design, implementation, and analysis of evaluations of education programs using random assignment and quasi-experimental designs. His focus is on experiments to study the effectiveness of educational and social programs for children and youth. He has played a leading role in many of Mathematica's elementary, secondary, postsecondary, and adult education studies, including a congressionally mandated national study of education technology, and the largest evaluations ever conducted of dropout prevention programs and after-school programs funded by the federal government.

Dynarski publishes widely in peer-reviewed journals and presents findings at conferences of researchers, policymakers, practitioners, and journalists. He is a member of the National Research Council committee on Evaluating Effectiveness of the National Board of Professional Teaching Standards certification program. He is also on the editorial boards of Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis and Effective Education. He has a Ph.D. in economics from the Johns Hopkins University.

Dr. Cris Sullivan

Dr. Cris M Sullivan is a professor of Ecological/Community Psychology and associate chair of the Psychology Department at Michigan State University (MSU). She has been an advocate and researcher in the movement to end violence against women since 1982. In addition to her MSU appointments, Cris is also the Director of Evaluation for the Michigan Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence and Senior Research Advisor to the National Resource Centre on Domestic Violence.

Cris's areas of research expertise include developing and evaluating community interventions for battered women and their children, improving the community response to violence against women, and evaluating victim service programmes. She has received numerous federal grants to support her work over the years, including grants from the National Institute of Mental Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the National Institute of Justice. Her most recent project is a five year NIMH RISP grant that involves collaborating with a large domestic abuse-sexual assault victim service organisation. The aim of this project is to enhance the organisation's capacity to engage in collaborative research, and to build a strong partnership for conducting meaningful and policy-oriented research on violence against women.

In addition to consulting for local, state, federal and international organisations and initiatives, Cris also conducts workshops on (1) effectively advocating in the community for women with abusive partners and their children (2) understanding the effects of domestic abuse on women and children (3) improving system responses to the problem of violence against women and (4) evaluating victim service agencies

Dr. Stephanie Holt, co-author of "Listen to Me!", researcher with Children's Research Centre, TCD.

Dr. Stephanie Holt is a lecturer in social work and Director of the Masters in social Work Programme in the School of Social Work & social Policy, Trinity College Dublin. Stephanie was awarded a Health Research Board Health Services Fellowship in 2006, enabling her to take a three-year leave of absence from her lecturing post in order to undertake research leading to the award of a phD. This research is concerned with children's experiences of post-separation contact with their fathers where there has been a prior history of domestic violence. Prior to this she worked as a community care social worker and co-ordinated a Family Support Service in the South Western Area Health Board. She also spent a year as a research fellow with the Children's Research Centre, Trinity College Dublin. Her academic and research interests include domestic violence, intimate partner homicide child care & family support, and research methods. She completed the M.Sc. in Child Protection and Welfare in 2000. She is based in the Masters in Social Work office, at 3-5 College Green, Dublin. Contact details: Telephone 01-8963908, Email: sholt@tcd.ie