| Biography
Neil Guterman is Paulette Goddard Professor of Social Work and Dean Emertius at NYU Silver School of Social Work. Dr. Guterman’s scholarly interests relate to services targeting children and violence, with special interest in child abuse and neglect prevention, as well as children’s exposure to violence outside the home. Dr. Guterman has published numerous peer reviewed scholarly articles on these topics, and is the author of Stopping Child Maltreatment Before it Starts: Emerging Horizons in Early Home Visitation Services (Sage, 2001). He is also a Co-Lead of the Grand Challenges for Social Work’s new Prevent Gun Violence challenge.
Dr. Guterman currently directs a study examining the effectiveness of strategies to prevent child abuse and neglect. As a noted authority on children and violence exposure, his expertise has been sought by the U.S. Surgeon General’s Office, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the International Society for Prevention of Child Abuse and Neglect, Prevent Child Abuse America, Children’s Trust Funds, and the National Conference of State Legislatures. He has delivered a number of keynote speeches and has provided expert consultation and training to state and local governmental bodies, foundations, human service organizations, and legal firms. He consults as an editor to a number of professional journals including Child Abuse and Neglect, Social Work, and the American Journal of Public Health, and serves on the editorial board of Child Maltreatment.
In 2019, he was inducted as a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare (AASWSW), an honorific society dedicated to achieving excellence in the field of social work and social welfare through high impact work that advances social good. Prior to NYU Silver, Dr. Guterman served as Dean, the Moses and Sylvia Firestone Professor, and the Director of the Beatrice Cummings Mayer Program in Violence Prevention at the University of Chicago School of Social Service Administration. From 1993-2006, he served on the faculty of the Columbia University School of Social Work. Prior to that, he was a Lady Davis Postdoctoral Fellow at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. He has also provided direct clinical social work services to children and families in a wide variety of family and child service settings in Michigan, California, Israel, and New York City.
Dr. Guterman holds a PhD in Social Work and Psychology from the University of Michigan, as well as an MSW in clinical practice with families and children, also from the University of Michigan. He earned his BA in psychology with highest honors from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
| Research
Child abuse and neglect remains an intractable problem in the US. Approximately six million children are the suspected victims of abuse and neglect and more than 1,700 children die each year as a result of child maltreatment. Surviving victims of child abuse and neglect are at greater risk of a shortened life span, more frequently suffer from an array of major medical conditions, and face a greater likelihood of involvement in crime, delinquency, substance abuse, school failure, depression and suicide. The expensive national child protection system is, by design, both coercive and stigmatizing and has shown little positive impact in preventing child maltreatment.
Preventing child maltreatment before it ever occurs – and minimizing the need for expensive intervention and the risk of widening damage to the social fabric – is at the core of Professor Neil Guterman’s research. Recent findings have shown that early home visitation services, delivered directly in the homes of families around the time of a child’s birth, hold significant potential to prevent abuse and neglect from ever occurring, and can promote positive developmental trajectories for children their families. Dean and Paulette Goddard Professor Neil Guterman’s scholarship has been centered on children’s victimization and on advancing such preventive strategies so that they deliver real and lasting benefit to vulnerable families.
Guterman has been conducting several related studies on child abuse prevention, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Institutes of Health, the Children’s Bureau in the Department of Health & Human Services, and a number of private foundations. His “second generation” research on home visitation services is testing ways to improve on the mixed outcomes reported in earlier studies on such services. For example, Guterman has most recently been studying the role of fathers in child maltreatment, and is presently designing and testing a second “enhancement” strategy that widens the predominant focus of early home visitation services from the mother-child relationship to a more inclusive focus on both mothers and fathers.
| Publications
Strategies to Enhance Father Engagement in Home Visiting: Results From a Qualitative Study of Dads Matter-HV
Bellamy, J. L., Phillips, J. D., Speer, S. R., Harty, J. S., Banman, A., Guterman, N. B. & Morales-Mirque, S., Jun 1 2024, In : Journal of the Society for Social Work and Research. 15, 2, p. 191-213 23 p.
Still Further Challenges to Advancing Social Work Research: Response to Feldman
Guterman, N. B., 2024, In : Research on Social Work Practice..
Parent–Worker Relationships in Home Visiting: Intersections of Parental Gender, Ethnicity, and Immigrant Status
Kim, J., Kwan, J. Y., Speer, S. R., Park, I. Y., Bellamy, J. L., Banman, A., Harty, J. S. & Guterman, N. B., Dec 2023, In : Families in Society. 104, 4, p. 451-464 14 p.
Engaging fathers to strengthen the impact of early home visitation on physical child abuse risk: Findings from the dads matter-HV randomized controlled trial
Guterman, N. B., Bellamy, J. L., Banman, A., Harty, J. S., Jaccard, J. & Mirque-Morales, S., Sep 2023, In : Child Abuse and Neglect. 143, 106315, p. 1-13 13 p.
Community violence
Haj-Yahia, M. M., Guterman, N. B. & Antunes, M. J. L., Jan 26 2023, The encyclopedia of macro social work: Volume 1 A-E. Oxford University Press, p. 489-505 17 p.
| Courses
MSW: Social Work Research I
MSW: Philanthropy and Strategic Resource Mobilization
DSW: Philanthropy and Strategic Resource Mobilization