Jill Spielfogel

Jill Spielfogel specializes in descriptive and evaluation studies of child welfare, family support, and early childhood programs with the goal of improving well-being and equity outcomes for youth and families. Spielfogel’s work covers key foster care policy issues, including placement stability, permanency, reduction of length of stay, kinship care, and mental health for youth in care. She has expertise engaging community members, including persons with lived experience, in research.

At Mathematica, Spielfogel offers programmatic and evaluation technical assistance to several human service agencies. She led the implementation of a Breakthrough Series Collaborative for the Administration for Children and Families’ Fathers and Continuous Learning Project. This project aimed to improve engagement of fathers and paternal relatives in five child welfare agencies. She has also worked with the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation to develop technical assistance tools for states. The tools covered topics ranging from implementation of the Family First Prevention Services Act, to the Multiethnic Placement Act and foster parent recruitment, to the collection of sexual orientation and gender identity data on youth in foster care.

Before joining Mathematica, she worked with families in multiple contexts, including schools and courts, and conducted research in child welfare agencies. She holds a Ph.D. in social work, policy, and practice from the University of Chicago and a M.S.W from the University of Illinois at Chicago.