Professor Elizabeth Fernandez

UNSW Australia

Phone: 9385 1865
E-mail: e.fernandez@unsw.edu.au

Elizabeth Fernandez (PhD), Professor of Social Work, School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Australia teaches courses in Life Span & Health, Child and Family Welfare and Professional Supervision. Her research focuses on child and family poverty, pathways and outcomes for children in care, early intervention and family support, reunification of separated children and outcomes of care leavers. She has led several Australian Research Council funded studies focusing on these themes, and most recently serves as the Principal Researcher on a national study of the ‘Long-term outcomes of Forgotten Australians’. She has been a research advisor to major research projects in child welfare and undertaken consultative roles to the Government and Non-Government Sector and the Judiciary. Her recent books include Theoretical and Empirical Insights into Child and Family Poverty (2016); Accomplishing Permanency: Reunification Pathways and Outcomes for Foster Children (2013). She is Associate Editor of Journal of Child and Family Studies and serves on the Editorial Boards of Child and Family Social Work, Children and Youth Services Review, Children Australia. She is a Board Member of the International Society for Child Indicators (ISCI), Founding and Executive Board Member of the International Association for Outcome Based Evaluation and Research on Family and Children’s Services (IAOBERfcs) and Chairs the Scientific Committee of the Association of Children’s Welfare Agencies (ACWA) Biennial National Conferences and its Research Forum.

Dr Jung-Sook Lee

UNSW Australia

Phone: 9385 2329
E-mail: js.lee@unsw.edu.au

Jung-Sook Lee is a senior lecturer in Social Work at the School of Social Sciences, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, UNSW. Her research focuses on the wellbeing of vulnerable children and their families. She conducts research in the areas of risk and resilience factors in child development, families with financial hardships, education of children in out-of-home care, long-term outcomes of care leavers, young people with complex support needs, intergenerational social mobility, social and cultural capital, and social justice. Jung-Sook authored  a much-cited article “Parent involvement, cultural capital and the achievement gap among elementary school children.” She is currently a chief investigator of two ARC funded projects: ‘Long Term Outcomes of Forgotten Australians’ and ‘Lost in Transition: Young People with Complex Support Needs’. She has extensive experience in quantitative research and analyses of large complex data. Jung-Sook has been teaching courses on research methods, human behaviour, and diversity for many years.

Dr Hazel Blunden

UNSW Australia

Dr. Hazel Blunden is a Research Associate at the University of New South Wales in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, working on an ARC funded project, Long Term Outcomes of Forgotten Australians. Dr. Blunden currently co-convenes a Masters course at UNSW. Hazel was Senior Research Assistant at the Urban Research Centre at Western Sydney University where she project managed many research projects including: an Evaluation of the NSW Boarding Houses Act 2012 (a five year, Category II project), the WorkFast Pilot Programme evaluation, a study on work disincentives among community housing tenants, an evaluation of a Housing First program in Parramatta, and a needs
analysis of homelessness services across four Western Sydney LGAs. She also co-ordinated/ lectured on two courses, Geographies of Social Difference and Economies of Cities and Regions. Hazel Blunden is the author and co-author of reports, articles and book chapters on housing policy issues including negative gearing of investment properties
and homelessness.

Dr Patricia McNamara

UNSW Australia

Patricia McNamara PhD practiced for many years as a social worker and family therapist in child and family welfare and mental health. She later worked for a long period as a senior teaching and research academic at La Trobe University. Patricia now holds honorary positions at La Trobe University, where she is a member of the University Human Research Ethics Committee, and at the University of Melbourne, where she assists with teaching and chairs doctoral progress panels. Her current research interests include therapeutic fostering and residential care, primary education during out-of-home care and long term outcomes of care. She is an academic member of the Australian Therapeutic Residential Care Alliance and is active in the International Foster Care Research Network. For ten years Patricia served as a foundation Board Member of the International Association for Outcome Based Evaluation and Research in Family and Children’s Services (iaOBERfcs). She is on the editorial Board of Residential Treatment for Children and Youth. Patricia is a Graduate of the Institute of Company Directors and a non-executive Director of Mackillop Family Services.

Paul-Auguste Cornefert

UNSW Australia

Phone: 9385 1516
E-mail: lofa@unsw.edu.au

Paul-Auguste Cornefert is a researcher in the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales working on a number of projects. He is primarily involved in research on birth fathers of adopted children, which forms the basis of his current PhD research. Currently he is also assisting in a research project at UNSW investigating ‘Forgotten Australians’ and identifying the long term outcomes for people who lived in institutional and other forms of out of home care. Previous research also includes Immunogenetics at Westmead Hospital, Sydney and Ageing at UNSW.

Szilvia Kovacs

UNSW Australia

Phone: 9385 1516
E-mail: lofa@unsw.edu.au

Szilvia Kovacs has a master’s degree in social policy. She is a Research Assistant at the School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales since September 2013. Previously she has worked as a researcher for over ten years in the Hungarian child protection system and in the following out-of home care areas: 0-3 years old children in residential settings; recruiting foster carers; services for teenage parents; Roma children in out-of-home care; child sexual abuse prevention; young people in the criminal justice system. Her current research interests are focused around teenage pregnancy and young parents in out-of-home care.