Richard M. Grinnell, Jr. is a professor and holds the Clair and Clarice Platt Jones/Helen Frays Endowed Chair of Social Work Research in the School of Social Work at Western Michigan University. He received his Ph.D. in social work from the University of Wisconsin at Madison and for over the past 30 years has held academic and senior university administrative appointments in Australia, Canada, and the United States. In addition to having an international reputation thanks to the publication of well over 100 journal articles, book chapters, and conference presentations, Dr. Grinnell has published 26 books on social work research methods, statistics, and evaluation. His latest book (with Yvonne Unrau and Peter Gabor) is Evaluation in Social Work: The Art and Science of Practice, 4th edition, (Oxford University Press, 2007). http://homepages.wmich.edu/~rgrinnell

Yvonne A. Unrau is an associate professor in the School of Social Work at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo Michigan. She has worked and studied in the area of foster care since 1989. Her interest in foster care began as a family preservation worker in a Canadian family service agency, where she worked with many children at risk for out-of-home placement. She later worked as a treatment foster care coordinator and then went on to earn her doctorate in Social Work from the University of Utah. Her research area has focused primarily on family preservation and foster care services, with particular interest in monitoring service delivery for the purposes of improving client outcomes, as well as the service delivery experience. She is co-author (with Margaret Williams and Richard M. Grinnell, Jr.) of Research Methods for Social Workers, 5th edition (Eddie Bowers Publishing, 2005), and has published numerous professional journal articles that have examined the services provided to vulnerable children and their families. http://homepages.wmich.edu/~yunrau