Laura Curran
Biographic Data
| ID | 95329 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Laura Curran |
| GIVEN NAMES | Laura |
| FAMILY NAME | Curran |
| SIGNATURE | CURRAN L |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8877-397X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 101 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Exploring Tenure
The role of tenure has historically been a prominent subject of public discussion, with debate focusing on its function and impact across the broader landscape of higher education. This article critically examines the dual nature of tenure in social work education, positioning it as both a safeguard for academic freedom and as a structural force with the capacity to constrain intellectual diversity, research innovation, and pedagogical developmen…
Promoting Competence
This article examines the role of social work licensure in the promotion, assessment, and oversight of professional competence in social work practice. We ground our discussion of licensure and competence within a broader conceptualization of professional competence. The article (a) presents conceptual and assessment models of a multistage competence, (b) considers the extant empirical evidence on the assessment of competence at each stage, (c) d…
Teaching Note—Innovating the Curriculum
History, the major storehouse of information, informs us about the important relationship between people and society and increases our understanding of basic societal values and institutional arrangements. A recent New York Times op-ed described “The Dangerous Decline of the Historical Profession.” Likewise for historical content in social work education, exacerbated by the 1970s‘ rise of neoliberalism and the profession’s long marginalization of…
Factors associated with receipt of medication for opioid use disorder among pregnant individuals entering treatment programs in the U.S
This study estimated that an average of approximately half of admissions who were pregnant with OUD received MOUD as part of their treatment plans, and identified regional and state trends which can be further investigated to understand factors contributing to these geographical variations in MOUD access. Also notable were findings pertaining to low MOUD receipt among those referred from criminal or legal entities, warranting further investigatio…
Social service providers under Covid-19 duress
1472), we ask: (1) how did agencies and social service workers manage service disruptions associated with COVID-19; (2) how did social service workers perceive shifts in clients' needs; (3) how did social service workers experience the transition to remote interactions with clients; and (4) how did social service workers cope with COVID-related transitions and demands. Findings: Our findings tell a story of unprecedented crises alongside powerful…
Challenging Anti-Black Racism across the Curriculum
As an introduction for a special journal volume on Challenging Anti-Black Racism across the Social Work Curriculum, this paper situates the volume’s contributions within a larger anti-racist tradition in social work including the often overlooked legacy of the profession’s Black leaders. It discusses multiple strands of anti-racist social work scholarship that provide scaffolding to support current and future anti-racist practices and thought. Th…
Technical Standards in Social Work Education
Following larger developments within professional education, schools of social work have increasingly adopted technical standards as non-academic criteria for program admission and continuation. This paper examines the emergence of technical standards within schools of social work, articulates the distinction from and overlap with other forms of non-academic admissions and retention criteria, and considers their use in relation to the larger lite…
The risk of child removal by child protective services among pregnant women in medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder
For parenting women with substance use disorders, enrolling in medication-assisted treatment often means being involved with child protective services. This study examines the impact of biopsychosocial factors on treatment outcomes for opioid-dependent pregnant women in methadone treatment, linking these outcomes with removal of a child by child protective services. This study evaluates factors associated with a client’s success in treatment, usi…
Social Work Licensure
Behavioral Health and MSW Applicants
U.S. colleges and universities have identified a recent surge in behavioral health issues among their student bodies. Social work educators and scholars have expressed concerns about student behavioral health issues, given their potential impact on their professional functioning. There is, however, relatively little empirical evidence of this issue. This study begins to fill this gap by exploring how issues of behavioral health are managed in the…
They Say, “If You Don’t Relax…You’re Going to Make Something Bad Happen”
Little is known about how women with medically high-risk pregnancy manage their emotions while worried about their pregnancies. This study aimed to phenomenologically explore 16 hospitalized women’s emotional reactions and coping during medically high-risk pregnancy with a focus on how emotion management techniques were utilized and what rationales women used for employing them, along with their interpretations of health care providers’ and famil…
Using a Virtual Agency to Teach Research
Use of instructional technology in social work has grown rapidly in recent years. Despite this increase, there is limited empirical investigation of its impact. In this paper we describe the use of a virtual agency for the teaching of research methods and program evaluation at a school of social work. Evaluation of the virtual agency showed that students in general were satisfied with its use and that higher satisfaction led to higher satisfactio…
On Being Mother and Patient
Medically high‐risk pregnancy (MHRP) affects 3 to 10% (diagnosis‐dependent) of pregnant women in the United States (National Institute of Child Health Development, 2015), threatening maternal and fetal well‐being. Although mothers’ prenatal distress and mother–infant attachment after birth have been quantitatively researched, little research has examined women's lived experiences of MHRP in the United States. We examined 16 women's experiences of…
Practicing maternal virtues prematurely
In this study, we examine the phenomenology of maternal identity development among U.S. women hospitalized with medically high-risk pregnancies (MHRP). We conducted 16 in-depth interviews with women and found that they drew on culturally normative notions of maternal nurture, worry, and sacrifice to construct maternal identity in the context of MHRP. Based on our findings, we suggest that MHRP shape women's sense of connection to and distinctive …
Human Service Administrator Perceptions of Online MSW Degree Programs
Online programs have proliferated rapidly in higher education, and this reality holds true for social work education as well. Employing a mixed methods design, this study looked at employer perceptions of online degrees compared to traditional degrees. Data was collected through an online survey that included Likert type and open-ended questions assessing employer attitudes and hiring practices regarding individuals who possess online MSW degrees…
Mental Health Trainees' Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Transracial Adoptive Families Headed by Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Couples
We investigated 109 (79.8% female; 76% White, and 83.5% Heterosexual) mental health trainees' explicit and implicit attitudes toward heterosexual, lesbian, and gay White couples adopting and raising Black children. To determine explicit attitudes, we used a vignette depicting a Black child ready for adoption and three types of equally qualified White families who were headed by a heterosexual couple, gay couple, or lesbian couple. The trainees we…
Maternal Identity Negotiations Among Low-Income Women With Symptoms of Postpartum Depression
In this study, we used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore maternal identity negotiations among low-income ethnic minority mothers with postpartum depression (PPD) symptoms. Nineteen mothers were recruited from Women, Infant, and Children clinics located in two coastal cities in the United States to participate in in-depth interviews. Constant comparative analysis revealed that mothers experienced their PPD symptoms and poverty a…
And You're Telling Me Not to Stress?” a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms among Low-Income Mothers
Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' ( n = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms…
"And You're Telling Me Not to Stress?" a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms Among Low-Income Mothers
Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' (n = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms.…
Barriers to Service Use for Postpartum Depression Symptoms Among Low-Income Ethnic Minority Mothers in the United States
The risks of untreated postpartum depression (PPD) in the United States are higher among low-income ethnic minority mothers. However, research has not adequately investigated barriers to formal help seeking for PPD symptoms among this vulnerable population. We used convenience and purposive sampling strategies to recruit mothers experiencing past-year (the year prior to interview) PPD symptoms ( n = 14), community key informants ( n = 11), and se…
You Can’t Tie and Untie Love That Fast”
This article traces the advancement of modern family preservation theory and practice over years 1946–63 through an analysis of published social work literature and case records from two Philadelphia foster care agencies. It argues that, well before the policy reforms of the 1970s, developments in social scientific theory and in the social work literature combined with the experiences of foster care workers to produce a recommitment to and revisi…
"Longing to "Belong
This essay discusses the experience of foster children in mid-century Philadelphia within the larger context of shifting expert narratives on foster care and changing casework practices. Based on an analysis of case records and administrative documents from the Philadelphia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (PSPCC) for the years 1946–1963 and the expert literature on foster care for the aforementioned period, this paper explores h…
Feminine Women, Hard Workers
Through an analysis of case records from two Philadelphia-based child welfare agencies, this article explores professional definitions of foster mothering as well as the experiences and beliefs of women who engaged in child fostering in mid-century America. It argues that social work experts, agency staff, and foster mothers themselves vacillated between an understanding of foster motherhood as an expression of femininity and as a form of valued …
Between Women
This article discusses a growing body of knowledge concerning the intersections of women’s history and gender history in American social work and related social reform movements. The authors explore current themes and conceptual frameworks that characterize this new scholarship, including professionalism, maternalism, and race relations. They also discuss how this literature challenges traditional interpretations of social work history, suggest t…
Historical Research by Elizabeth Ann Danto
Once a well-respected form of scholarship within academic social work, historical analysis increasingly has lost visibility and legitimacy within the discipline over the last several years. Elizabe
Barriers to Service Use for Postpartum Depression Symptoms Among Low-Income Ethnic Minority Mothers in the United States
The risks of untreated postpartum depression (PPD) in the United States are higher among low-income ethnic minority mothers. However, research has not adequately investigated barriers to formal help seeking for PPD symptoms among this vulnerable population. We used convenience and purposive sampling strategies to recruit mothers experiencing past-year (the year prior to interview) PPD symptoms ( n = 14), community key informants ( n = 11), and se…
Making Men Into Dads
Recent revisions in child support and paternity establishment legislation enacted under the 1996 welfare reform act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), significantly alter the American welfare state's relationship to men's fathering. Through a critical review of prior research and social service literature, the authors argue that PRWORA actively constructs fatherhood not only through state policies that …
Wayward Girls and Virtuous Women
In the Progressive Era, many immigrant and working-class girls were tried for crimes of immorality, were confined to reformatories, and were sometimes forced to undergo sterilization. This article discusses social workers' relationship to these practices that criminalized adolescent female sexuality by examining two branches of the burgeoning profession: the social reformers and the caseworkers
Between Women
This article discusses a growing body of knowledge concerning the intersections of women’s history and gender history in American social work and related social reform movements. The authors explore current themes and conceptual frameworks that characterize this new scholarship, including professionalism, maternalism, and race relations. They also discuss how this literature challenges traditional interpretations of social work history, suggest t…
Maternal Identity Negotiations Among Low-Income Women With Symptoms of Postpartum Depression
In this study, we used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore maternal identity negotiations among low-income ethnic minority mothers with postpartum depression (PPD) symptoms. Nineteen mothers were recruited from Women, Infant, and Children clinics located in two coastal cities in the United States to participate in in-depth interviews. Constant comparative analysis revealed that mothers experienced their PPD symptoms and poverty a…
The Psychology of Poverty
Through a primary source analysis of professional and academic social work writings, this article describes how post–World War II (1946–63) social work researchers, educators, and clinical theorists adopted a psychological discourse to explain welfare use among single mothers. Faced with a postwar backlash against the federal entitlement program for single mothers and their children, Aid to Dependent Children, social work scholars drew on psychol…
And You're Telling Me Not to Stress?” a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms among Low-Income Mothers
Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' ( n = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms…
Human Service Administrator Perceptions of Online MSW Degree Programs
Online programs have proliferated rapidly in higher education, and this reality holds true for social work education as well. Employing a mixed methods design, this study looked at employer perceptions of online degrees compared to traditional degrees. Data was collected through an online survey that included Likert type and open-ended questions assessing employer attitudes and hiring practices regarding individuals who possess online MSW degrees…
"And You're Telling Me Not to Stress?" a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms Among Low-Income Mothers
Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' (n = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms.…
Feminine Women, Hard Workers
Through an analysis of case records from two Philadelphia-based child welfare agencies, this article explores professional definitions of foster mothering as well as the experiences and beliefs of women who engaged in child fostering in mid-century America. It argues that social work experts, agency staff, and foster mothers themselves vacillated between an understanding of foster motherhood as an expression of femininity and as a form of valued …
Social Work Licensure
You Can’t Tie and Untie Love That Fast”
This article traces the advancement of modern family preservation theory and practice over years 1946–63 through an analysis of published social work literature and case records from two Philadelphia foster care agencies. It argues that, well before the policy reforms of the 1970s, developments in social scientific theory and in the social work literature combined with the experiences of foster care workers to produce a recommitment to and revisi…
Wayward Girls and Virtuous Women
In the Progressive Era, many immigrant and working-class girls were tried for crimes of immorality, were confined to reformatories, and were sometimes forced to undergo sterilization. This article discusses social workers' relationship to these practices that criminalized adolescent female sexuality by examining two branches of the burgeoning profession: the social reformers and the caseworkers
Wayward Girls and Virtuous Women
Making Men Into Dads
Recent revisions in child support and paternity establishment legislation enacted under the 1996 welfare reform act, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), significantly alter the American welfare state's relationship to men's fathering. Through a critical review of prior research and social service literature, the authors argue that PRWORA actively constructs fatherhood not only through state policies that …
The Psychology of Poverty
Through a primary source analysis of professional and academic social work writings, this article describes how post–World War II (1946–63) social work researchers, educators, and clinical theorists adopted a psychological discourse to explain welfare use among single mothers. Faced with a postwar backlash against the federal entitlement program for single mothers and their children, Aid to Dependent Children, social work scholars drew on psychol…
"Serving the "Hard-to-Serve
This critical analysis of recent research and evaluations of welfare reform efforts describes how states have increasingly drawn on clinical knowledge in their efforts to move "hard-to-serve" recipients into the labor force. It argues that a clinical perspective is helpful as it brings attention to the mental health needs of low-income women. At the same time, however, this article suggests that states' use of a clinical framework is problematic …
The Culture of Race, Class, and Poverty
Through a primary source historical analysis, this article discusses the emergence of a cultural discourse in the early cold war (1946-1963) social work literature. It traces the evolution of social work's cultural narrative in relation to social scientific perspectives, changing race relations, and increasing welfare caseloads. Social work scholars originally employed their cultural discourse to account for racial and ethnic difference and event…
Between Women
This article discusses a growing body of knowledge concerning the intersections of women’s history and gender history in American social work and related social reform movements. The authors explore current themes and conceptual frameworks that characterize this new scholarship, including professionalism, maternalism, and race relations. They also discuss how this literature challenges traditional interpretations of social work history, suggest t…
Feminine Women, Hard Workers
Through an analysis of case records from two Philadelphia-based child welfare agencies, this article explores professional definitions of foster mothering as well as the experiences and beliefs of women who engaged in child fostering in mid-century America. It argues that social work experts, agency staff, and foster mothers themselves vacillated between an understanding of foster motherhood as an expression of femininity and as a form of valued …
You Can’t Tie and Untie Love That Fast”
This article traces the advancement of modern family preservation theory and practice over years 1946–63 through an analysis of published social work literature and case records from two Philadelphia foster care agencies. It argues that, well before the policy reforms of the 1970s, developments in social scientific theory and in the social work literature combined with the experiences of foster care workers to produce a recommitment to and revisi…
"Longing to "Belong
This essay discusses the experience of foster children in mid-century Philadelphia within the larger context of shifting expert narratives on foster care and changing casework practices. Based on an analysis of case records and administrative documents from the Philadelphia Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children (PSPCC) for the years 1946–1963 and the expert literature on foster care for the aforementioned period, this paper explores h…
And You're Telling Me Not to Stress?” a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms among Low-Income Mothers
Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' ( n = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms…
"And You're Telling Me Not to Stress?" a Grounded Theory Study of Postpartum Depression Symptoms Among Low-Income Mothers
Low-income mothers in the U.S. are more likely to experience postpartum depression (PPD) and less likely to seek treatment than their middle-class counterparts. Despite this knowledge, prior research has not provided an in-depth understanding of PPD symptoms as they are experienced by low-income mothers. Through in-depth interviews, this study investigated low-income mothers' (n = 19) experiences and explanatory frameworks for their PPD symptoms.…
Barriers to Service Use for Postpartum Depression Symptoms Among Low-Income Ethnic Minority Mothers in the United States
The risks of untreated postpartum depression (PPD) in the United States are higher among low-income ethnic minority mothers. However, research has not adequately investigated barriers to formal help seeking for PPD symptoms among this vulnerable population. We used convenience and purposive sampling strategies to recruit mothers experiencing past-year (the year prior to interview) PPD symptoms ( n = 14), community key informants ( n = 11), and se…
Maternal Identity Negotiations Among Low-Income Women With Symptoms of Postpartum Depression
In this study, we used a constructivist grounded theory approach to explore maternal identity negotiations among low-income ethnic minority mothers with postpartum depression (PPD) symptoms. Nineteen mothers were recruited from Women, Infant, and Children clinics located in two coastal cities in the United States to participate in in-depth interviews. Constant comparative analysis revealed that mothers experienced their PPD symptoms and poverty a…
Practicing maternal virtues prematurely
In this study, we examine the phenomenology of maternal identity development among U.S. women hospitalized with medically high-risk pregnancies (MHRP). We conducted 16 in-depth interviews with women and found that they drew on culturally normative notions of maternal nurture, worry, and sacrifice to construct maternal identity in the context of MHRP. Based on our findings, we suggest that MHRP shape women's sense of connection to and distinctive …
Human Service Administrator Perceptions of Online MSW Degree Programs
Online programs have proliferated rapidly in higher education, and this reality holds true for social work education as well. Employing a mixed methods design, this study looked at employer perceptions of online degrees compared to traditional degrees. Data was collected through an online survey that included Likert type and open-ended questions assessing employer attitudes and hiring practices regarding individuals who possess online MSW degrees…
Mental Health Trainees' Explicit and Implicit Attitudes Toward Transracial Adoptive Families Headed by Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Couples
We investigated 109 (79.8% female; 76% White, and 83.5% Heterosexual) mental health trainees' explicit and implicit attitudes toward heterosexual, lesbian, and gay White couples adopting and raising Black children. To determine explicit attitudes, we used a vignette depicting a Black child ready for adoption and three types of equally qualified White families who were headed by a heterosexual couple, gay couple, or lesbian couple. The trainees we…
On Being Mother and Patient
Medically high‐risk pregnancy (MHRP) affects 3 to 10% (diagnosis‐dependent) of pregnant women in the United States (National Institute of Child Health Development, 2015), threatening maternal and fetal well‐being. Although mothers’ prenatal distress and mother–infant attachment after birth have been quantitatively researched, little research has examined women's lived experiences of MHRP in the United States. We examined 16 women's experiences of…
They Say, “If You Don’t Relax…You’re Going to Make Something Bad Happen”
Little is known about how women with medically high-risk pregnancy manage their emotions while worried about their pregnancies. This study aimed to phenomenologically explore 16 hospitalized women’s emotional reactions and coping during medically high-risk pregnancy with a focus on how emotion management techniques were utilized and what rationales women used for employing them, along with their interpretations of health care providers’ and famil…
Using a Virtual Agency to Teach Research
Use of instructional technology in social work has grown rapidly in recent years. Despite this increase, there is limited empirical investigation of its impact. In this paper we describe the use of a virtual agency for the teaching of research methods and program evaluation at a school of social work. Evaluation of the virtual agency showed that students in general were satisfied with its use and that higher satisfaction led to higher satisfactio…
Behavioral Health and MSW Applicants
U.S. colleges and universities have identified a recent surge in behavioral health issues among their student bodies. Social work educators and scholars have expressed concerns about student behavioral health issues, given their potential impact on their professional functioning. There is, however, relatively little empirical evidence of this issue. This study begins to fill this gap by exploring how issues of behavioral health are managed in the…
The risk of child removal by child protective services among pregnant women in medication-assisted treatment for opioid use disorder
For parenting women with substance use disorders, enrolling in medication-assisted treatment often means being involved with child protective services. This study examines the impact of biopsychosocial factors on treatment outcomes for opioid-dependent pregnant women in methadone treatment, linking these outcomes with removal of a child by child protective services. This study evaluates factors associated with a client’s success in treatment, usi…
Social Work Licensure
Challenging Anti-Black Racism across the Curriculum
As an introduction for a special journal volume on Challenging Anti-Black Racism across the Social Work Curriculum, this paper situates the volume’s contributions within a larger anti-racist tradition in social work including the often overlooked legacy of the profession’s Black leaders. It discusses multiple strands of anti-racist social work scholarship that provide scaffolding to support current and future anti-racist practices and thought. Th…
Technical Standards in Social Work Education
Following larger developments within professional education, schools of social work have increasingly adopted technical standards as non-academic criteria for program admission and continuation. This paper examines the emergence of technical standards within schools of social work, articulates the distinction from and overlap with other forms of non-academic admissions and retention criteria, and considers their use in relation to the larger lite…
Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Political science (18 works) · Social Work (16 works) · Law (12 works) · Medicine (12 works) · Social Work Education and Practice (11 works) · Maternal Mental Health During Pregnancy and Postpartum (9 works) · Psychiatry (9 works) · Law (8 works)