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Faculty

Julia R. Henly, Ph.D.

- Biography
- Publications

Biography

Julia R. Henly is an Associate Professor in the School of Social Service Administration and faculty affiliate of the University of Chicago Center for Human Potential and Public Policy. Henly is also a research affiliate of the National Poverty Center at the University of Michigan, and a member of the steering committee of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Administration for Children and Families' Child Care Policy Research Consortium. Her fields of special interest include family poverty, child care and welfare policy, work-family strategies of low-wage workers, informal support networks, and employment discrimination.

Henly

Professor Henly is co-Principal Investigator (with S. Lambert) of the Scheduling Intervention Study, a randomized experimental study designed to assess the effects of a workplace intervention intended to reduce instability caused by scheduling practices in entry-level retail jobs. The intervention is targeted at making work more predictable and flexible for workers, with the goal of reducing work-family conflict and improving key employee and family outcomes such as worker performance, child care stability, and parenting practices. Professor Henly is also Principal Investigator and Director of the Study of Work-Child Care Fit, a qualitative investigation of the work-family management strategies of low-wage retail workers. The study examines how job features such as work timing, schedule predictability, and employee control shape child care needs and the child care and family strategies that parents develop to manage their employment and child care responsibilities. From the perspective of child care providers, the study also considers the demands that parents' jobs place on child care providers, and the responses of providers (across child care sectors) to irregular and unpredictable parental work schedules. Professor Henly is currently working with an interdisciplinary group of scholars and policy researchers (the "Quality Round Table") on a USDHHS (ACF) Child Care Bureau-funded project designed to inform the understanding, measurement, and practice of quality child care programming. In a separate line of research based on data from a quantitative panel survey of former and current welfare recipients, Professor Henly is investigating the relationship between nonstandard job features, child care subsidy use, and child care arrangements. Using this same panel study data, she has investigated the coping and mobility functions of social support, the relationship between social support and interpersonal conflict, and the relationship between social support and formal service and policy use. Professor Henly's work has appeared in several peer-reviewed journals such as Journal of Marriage and Family, Social Work Research, Children and Youth Services Review, and Journal of Social Issues, as well as several edited book volumes.

Henly

Professor Henly received her B.A. in Psychology and Social Work from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and her M.S.W. (Policy and Planning) and Ph.D. in Social Work and Social Psychology from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Prior to joining the faculty of the University of Chicago, she was Assistant Professor in the School of Public Policy and Social Research at the University of California, Los Angeles.

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Publications
  • Campbell, E., Henly, J.R., Elliott, D., Irwin, K. In press. Subjective constructions of neighborhood boundaries. Journal of Urban Affairs,Vol 31.
  • Lambert, S. & Henly, J.R. 2007. "Lower-Level Jobs andWork-Family Studies." In Sloan work and family encyclopedia, wfnetwork.bc.edu/encyclopedia_template.php?id=4254.
  • Henly, J.R., Shaefer, H.L. &Waxman, R.E. 2006. Nonstandard work schedules: Employer- and employee-driven flexibility in retail jobs. Social Service Review 80: 609-634.
  • Henly, J.R., Danziger, S.K. & Offer, S. 2005. The contribution of social support to the material well-being of welfare recipients. Journal of Marriage and Family 67: 122-140.
  • Henly, J.R. & Lambert, S. 2005. "Nonstandard work and child care needs of low income parents." In Workforce/workplace mismatch? Work, family, health & well-being, eds. S.M. Bianchi, L.M. Casper, K.E. Christensen & R.B. King. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
  • Lyons, S., Henly, J.R. & Schuerman, J. 2005. Informal support in maltreating families: its effect on parenting practices. Children and Youth Services Review 27(1): 21-28.
  • Bromer, J. & Henly, J.R. 2004. Child care as family support? Care giving practices across child care provider types. Children and Youth Services Review 26(10): 941-964.
  • Henly, J.R. 2002. "Informal Support Networks and the Maintenance of Low-wage Jobs." In F. Munger (Ed.), Laboring Below the Line: The New Ethnography of Poverty, Low-wage Work, and Survival in the Global Economy (pp. 179-203). New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
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