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Erika is a co-director of The Black Reparations Project, a collaboration with Mills College at Northeastern University. The Black Reparations Project creates opportunities for students, faculty, and practitioners to come together to study, discuss, and contribute to policy analysis on Black reparations.
Erika teaches:
- Policy Analysis
- Advanced Policy Analysis
- Capstone
- Race, Ethnicity, and Public Policy
Erika is passionate about qualitative research, and brings expertise in child welfare, policy analysis, and Black reparations to her scholarship. As Data Manager at JBS, International, she drove process improvements and authored multiple reports for the Children's Bureau. Erika also brings industry experience from her time with Deloitte Consulting, where she helped the District of Columbia’s Child and Family Services Agency emerge from Court Receivership.
During her post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley's School of Social Welfare, she led a collaboration to create a longitudinal qualitative database providing insights on the life course of children in foster care. Recently, she led a team of experts in producing a report for Riverside County's Human Services Agency. The report identified opportunities for enhancing safety and economic stability for children and families involved in the child welfare system.
Erika is on the Berkeley Unified School District Black Reparations task force. She is also a board member for Waterside Workshops, a local non-profit that teaches opportunity youth to build boats and bikes. She is on the national board of directors for Reparation Generation, a non-profit making reparative wealth transfers supporting Black homeownership in Detroit.
Contact and Office Hours
Office 2465 LeConte, room 205
Office Hours
Fridays 10-12 on Zoom
About
Areas of Expertise
- Diversity/Equity/Inclusion
- Qualitative Research Methods
- Policy Analysis
- Black Reparations
- Child Welfare
Curriculum Vitae
Other Affiliations
- Berkeley Unified School District Reparations Task force
- Reparation Generation
- Waterside Workshops
Research
Research Affiliations
- Black Reparations Project: Director
Selected Publications
Using Qualitative Data-Mining to Identify Skillful Practice in Child Welfare Case Records
Using qualitative data-mining methods, this study analyzed 39 child welfare case records in order to identify examples of skillful practice. Conducted in partnership with a public child welfare agency in northern California, the study found that child welfare workers are implementing many of the practices promoted by statewide and national child welfare practice frameworks. Broad categories of skillful practice identified included: (1) effective communication by social workers, (2) support for client self-determination, and (3) active intervention strategies. Study findings provide support for incorporating case record review processes in training and supervision in order to integrate practice-based expertise with research-based evidence.
Learning Practice-Based Research Methods: Capturing the Experiences of MSW Students
Sidsel Natland, Erika Weissinger, Genevieve Graaf & Sarah Carnochan (2016) Learning Practice-Based Research Methods: Capturing the Experiences of MSW Students, Journal of Teaching in Social Work, 36:1, 33-51, DOI: 10.1080/08841233.2016.1117366
The literature on teaching research methods to social work students identifies many challenges, such as dealing with the tensions related to producing research relevant to practice, access to data to teach practice-based research, and limited student interest in learning research methods. This is an exploratory study of the learning experiences of ten MSW students involved in a yearlong research methods course that utilized research data in a research unit located inside a school of social welfare and facilitated by doctoral level project coordinators. Based on hands-on experiences related to data analysis, interpretation of findings, and report writing, three themes emerged from the students’ learning experiences: interaction between research and practice, research supervision, and peer collaboration. These themes provided the foundation for identifying the facilitators and obstacles of learning and engagement that inform the study’s implications for integrating student learning based on the use of agency data that can inform agency practitioners through participatory approaches to learning.
In the News
Articles and Op-Eds
Aspiring white allies: It’s time to begin your anti-racist journey
The Daily Californian, December 22, 2020
California Senate bill could help thousands of college students enroll in CalFresh
The Daily Californian, June 21, 2019
In Texas, citizenship is not a factor in hunt for adoptive parents
Chronicle of Social Change, April 27, 2016
Media Citations
California is the most diverse state in the US, West Virginia comes in last, and Houston tops the list among cities, finds study
Media Entertainment Arts WorldWide, March 29, 2020
Through the eye of Florence: How extreme weather has exposed the inequality of disaster
The Daily Californian, October 5, 2018
Last updated on 09/14/2023