Teaching and Administration

Joan Pennell is Professor and Head, Department of Social Work North Carolina State University where she teaches and carries out training and evaluation on family-centered meetings in child welfare and schools. In addition, she is an Adjunct Professor at Memorial University of Newfoundland (Canada) School of Social Work, where she supervises doctoral students and has served as the Interim Director and the chair of the Ph.D. Studies Program. Previously, she taught at the University of Manitoba Faculty of Social Work in Winnipeg. Her curriculum development within Social Work has included diploma (Inuit), bachelor, masters, and doctoral programs and emphasizes interconnecting practice, policy, and research. As well, she has taught social service employees, field instructors, and students in both Women's Studies and Psychology.

Research and Publications

Her research and publications are directed toward fostering constructive partnerships for engaging families and communities and countering violence. She is the Principal Investigator for the North Carolina Family-Centered Meetings Project in child welfare, public schools, and system of care. She served as Principal Investigator for two family group conferencing projects: the North Carolina Family Group Conferencing Project and (with Gale Burford) the Family Group Decision Making Project in Newfoundland & Labrador (Canada). She is a consultant for the external evaluation of Family Team Meetings in the District of Columbia's Child and Family Services Agency. Her areas of study and scholarship include child welfare, schools, domestic violence, youth justice, aboriginal programming, organizational development, community practice, feminist education, and empowerment research. She co-authored Community Research as Empowerment: Feminist Links, Postmodern Interruptions (Oxford University Press, 1996), Family group conferencing: Evaluation guidelines (American Humane Association, 2002), and Widening the Circle: The Practice and Evaluation of Family Group Conferencing with Children, Youths, and their Families (NASW Press, 2005). In addition to academic publications, she has prepared brochures, manuals, media presentations, and videos.

Training and Evaluation

Her training and consultation work has included child and family programs, public schools, women's organizations, First Nations/Native American programs, criminal justice workers, and health personnel and has focused on family group conferencing, research/evaluation, organizational development, and group work. On family group conferencing, and more generally family-centered meetings, she has provided training in North Carolina, New York, South Carolina, Oregon, Virginia, Utah, Vermont, California, and Wisconsin as well as in Canada, England, Australia, New Zealand, and the Netherlands. On partnership-building evaluation, she has served as a consultant to the Healthy Families/Thriving Communities Collaboratives in Washington, DC.

Practice and Policy

Her practice work has included child protection, individual and family counseling, and organizational and community development, and her policy work has been particularly in youth justice, child welfare, domestic violence, and university education. Appointed to the National Crime Prevention Council (Canada), she helped to develop national policy on crime prevention and, as chair of its Youth Justice Committee, specifically for youth crime. In her testimony/briefs and presentations, she has emphasized using social development and community-building strategies.