Jerry Milner
UA Social Work alumnus Jerry Milner will lead the federal agency within the Department of Health and Human Services that oversees federal child welfare funding and policy. He was hired by the Trump administration in June 2017.
Established in 1977, the Administration for Children, Youth and Families (ACYF) oversees the Family and Youth Services Bureau as well as the much larger Children’s Bureau, which was created by President William Howard Taft back in 1912. As acting commissioner of ACYF, Milner oversees a budget of $9.7 billion and a staff of 200, giving him the power to significantly influence national child welfare policy.
Prior to his current role, Milner ran Alabama’s foster care system, and then joined the George W. Bush administration’s Children’s Bureau. There, he helped design the Child and Family Services Review (CFSR) process, a periodic review of state child welfare systems conducted by ACYF.
Milner also served as a vice president at a consulting firm called the Center for the Support of Families, where he presided over child welfare practice. Among his projects there was a 2016 report, where he and his team found that New Hampshire’s child welfare system was not adequately investigating reports of abuse and neglect in part due to a “seriously overloaded workforce.” These are some of the very issues he will have to grapple with in his new role, but on a much larger scale.
Milner received both his MSW and doctorate degrees from The University of Alabama School of Social Work.
Read more in The Chronicle of Social Change.
— Article from The Chronicle of Social Change