Dr. Robert L. Fischer
Grace Longwell Coyle Professor in Civil Society
Director, Center on Poverty and Community Development
Chair, Master of Nonprofit Organizations Program
Jack, Joseph, and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Case Western Reserve University

Family housing instability is closely linked to child welfare issues. This study employed a mixed-methods approach to examine the long-term housing outcomes and experiences of families in a randomized controlled trial (RCT), and how insights from treatment group participants, their case workers, and child welfare workers help to explain those outcomes. The authors used county-level administrative data (n = 273) to explore and compare program participants’ housing stability two years before the RCT, during the RCT, and two years after the RCT concluded. They explored treatment group participants’ housing experiences through 36 in-depth interviews with service providers and treatment group participants.

The quantitative results indicated that the treatment group had somewhat more housing stability compared to the control group, but the difference was not statistically significant. Qualitative thematic analysis revealed the overarching themes of (1) Factors Supporting Housing Stability & Resilience; (2) Challenges to Housing Stability, and (3) Housing Didn’t Solve Everything. They conclude that, although obtaining housing is a necessary foundation for families working through child welfare cases, it is inadequate to ensure long-term housing stability. Practitioners and policymakers must advocate for and address critical issues related to facilitating families’ housing stability over the long-term.

Robert L. Fischer is the Grace Longwell Coyle Professor in Civil Society at the Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences of Case Western Reserve University, where he leads a range of evaluation research studies and teaches evaluation methods to graduate students in social work and nonprofit management. He is also Co-Director of the The Center on Poverty and Community Development. Since 2001, he has led the Center’s research on Invest in Children, a county-wide early childhood initiative that includes home visiting, children’s health, and childcare components. Dr. Fischer is also faculty director of the Master of Nonprofit Organizations (MNO) degree program.

Dr. Robert L. Fischer
Grace Longwell Coyle Professor in Civil Society
Jack, Joseph, & Morton Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences
Director, Center on Urban Poverty and Community Development
Case Western Reserve University

Integrated administrative data systems (IADs) are a powerful resource to implement research and analysis for social policy. While IADs may capture racial identity data from multiple administrative sources, there is no agreed upon criteria for whether and how to synthesize this information in a way that (1) produces knowledge to advance racial equity, while (2) underscoring race as a social construct. This study leverages a county-level IAD to test and analyze an event-table design to represent racial identity that, when informed with historical and community knowledge, may meet both of the aforementioned goals.

The authors illustrate this approach applied to the development of a registry of youth experiencing homelessness, as captured by linked administrative data from vital records, homeless service agencies, schools, food support programs, and other systems. The event table design includes race identity for each person in the registry across all systems included. They develop criteria to inform the hierarchy of one source over another when there are discrepancies in race identity across systems, and when categories for this variable differ across administrative systems. They provide historical and social context behind potential discrepancies and discuss approaches to missing data. Furthermore, they highlight the value of including qualitative knowledge from agency data managers, users, and those represented in the data to inform the synthesis of information around race. Finally, they illustrate how this approach can guide research analysis and contextualize results, thus enhancing the research process and advancing racial equity with IADs.

Robert L. Fischer joined the Mandel School in 2001 as a senior research associate, became an associate professor in the tenure track in 2017, tenured in 2020, and full professor in 2024. He has authored more than 60 peer-reviewed publications and generated more than $15 million in extramural grant funding as principal or co-principal investigator. Dr. Fischer has served as director of the MNO program since 2012 and teaches two courses in the program. He is the lead full-time faculty member teaching in the MNO degree program, and led the work to it being in the inaugural cohort of accredited nonprofit masters programs in 2019.

Additionally, Dr. Fischer served as co-director of the Center on Poverty and Community Development since 2005 and as director since 2022. He has also been an active member of the school’s steering committee, curriculum committee, budget committee, library committee and has served as chair of a standing committee on the faculty senate. He currently serves on the board of trustees of both the St. Lukes Foundation and the Woodruff Foundation in Cleveland. Dr. Fischer has been a generous institution-builder at the Mandel School and CWRU and a frequent contributor to the academy.