Kess Ballentine

Kess Ballentine, MA, MSW, PhD is an Assistant Professor at Wayne State University School of Social Work. She uses critical theory and mixed methods to uncover how institutional policy and practice affects individual and family outcomes. Most of her work focuses on the experiences of low-income working families with children and families affected by child-serving systems, including schools, child welfare, and child mental healthcare. Her work has been published in Health Affairs, Journal of Family and Economic Issues, and New Solutions: A Journal of Environmental and Occupational Health Policy. Her goal is to have local impact while bridging siloed areas of the research to expose complex, cross-system interactions that maintain social injustices and harm family well-being while working through community-research partnerships to identify and implement innovative solutions.