Linda-Jeanne M. Mack, LICSW, LCSW-C
Previous Education
MSW, Westfield State University
B.A., UMass Amherst
Research Interests
Linda-Jeanne is a PhD Candidate and the Community Justice and Equity (CJae) Doctoral Fellow. She has a practice-informed research agenda inspired by years of work with children and families impacted by child welfare systems, foster care, and adoption.
Since starting her doctoral education, she has been active in research, practice and teaching. With 14 peer reviewed publications, including five as first author, she has also sole-authored an invited peer reviewed publication, an invited book review, a book chapter, and two magazine articles. Her research primarily focuses on decision making and policies in child welfare systems and the impact of those decisions on families. Linda-Jeanne has also contributed to several other projects focusing on diverse populations, including using her qualitative analytic skills as lead methodologist. Her work has included presentations at numerous national and international conferences including the International Society for the Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, European Scientific Association on Residential and Family Care for Children and Adolescents, and the Global Gathering for the Future of Child Welfare.
Linda-Jeanne is currently working on a grant awarded through a partnership with two local Maryland jurisdictions to understand terminations of parental rights decision-making and outcomes in the state for child welfare system (CWS) impacted families. The work from this grant is also being used for her dissertation titled: A mixed methods exploration of terminations of parental rights (TPR) processes and outcomes for children and youth in out-of-home placement. In 2023, she received the Susan Zuravin PhD Scholarship awarded for her research in child welfare and the UMB Global Learning Grant in 2024-2025. She was a CSWE-GADE-SSWR Doctoral Policy Fellow from 2022-2023.
Prior to the PhD program, Linda-Jeanne worked for several years as a program director for a state contracted child welfare permanency program, ensuring that children and youth reunified with their families or exited care to a legal caregiver. She was also a therapist, specializing in adoption, kinship care and foster care competent mental health and well-being. Linda-Jeanne has maintained an active consulting practice throughout the PhD program working with local and national agencies.
Teaching Interests
Linda-Jeanne has been teaching and training adult learners since 2013, including training foster parents, and human service workers, and teaching at multiple universities. Prior to the PhD program she was an adjunct lecturer at Western New England University. Between 2018-2021, she taught Child Welfare, Generalist Practice I and II, Social Work with Groups and Families, and Senior Practicum. Since moving to Baltimore, she’s taught at both the UM/SSW and George Washington University. At UM/SSW she co- taught two MSW study abroad International Social Work courses. At GWU she taught Introduction to Human Services and Social Justice; Introduction to Social Justice and Public Policy; Professional Relationships and Human Services; and Child and Adolescent Development.
Selected Publications
Mack, L.-J. M., Shdaimah, C. S., & Phillips, D. R. (2025). “My heart is in the right place, but I don’t feel the court’s heart is beating”: perspectives on feeling valued from multiple nonprofessional stakeholders in child welfare court. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 19(5), 1189–1212. https://doi.org/10.1080/15548732.2024.2401936
Mack, L.-J.M. (2024). We shouldn’t have to work so hard to terminate parental rights: Remarks on mental health and child welfare decision making from the Daniel Thursz Uneasy Alignments: The Mental Health Turn in the American Legal System Symposium Journal of Health Care and Law Policy, 27(1) 145-151.
Mack, L.-J. M., & Barth, R. P. (2022). Reinstating parental rights that have been terminated: Finding ways to restore legal connections for children who had been in foster care. Journal of Public Child Welfare, 17(4), 769–787. https://doi.org/10.1080/15548732.2022.2113200