"I tell my students that, in order to become insightful, competent, and intelligent social work practitioners, they need to immerse themselves in the scholarship and at the same time come to understand who they are and what they believe," says Dr. Krane, a Professor at the McGill School of Social Work since 1991. "It is important that students recognize competing voices that construct what is helpful and beneficial – from the scholarship, from their own perspectives as social workers, and from the clients with whom they work. I believe that gifted practitioners recognize and act upon not just the commonalities but the discrepancies between sources of knowledge and the voices from which they emerge." After practicing child protection social work in the arena of child sexual abuse while volunteering at a rape crisis centre, Krane became keenly aware of conflicting dialogues around blame and responsibility that permeated front-line practice responses to sexual abuses against children and women. The contradictory assumptions underlying practices and policies in sexual abuse sparked her interest in pursuing doctoral studies, a theme that continues to permeate her teaching, research and community involvement to date. She is the author of What's Mother Got to do with it? Protecting Children from Sexual Abuse (University of Toronto Press, 2003). In this book, Dr. Krane exposes taken-for-granted maternal responsibilities to respond to children's needs and simultaneous mother-blame. She explicates how the child protection system transforms women as mothers into the protectors of children, outlining the costs and consequences for all involved. Her publications to date examine feminist analyses of mainstream and community child welfare practices, protection practices, and trends in risk assessment, critical analyses of services to battered women and their children, and cautious reflections on the intersection of domestic violence and child protection interventions. Dr. Krane is particularly interested in the contradictory effects of social work practices with vulnerable women and children that emerge when multiple facets of women's identities are relegated to the margins of such practices.
Dr. Julia Krane completed an Honors BA in Psychology at the University of Ottawa. Her thesis explored the effects of raising children with hyperactivity on mother-child relationships, maternal well-being and marital satisfaction. Realizing she was interested in pursuing a career that allowed her to work with people on the issues they face in their relationships, Krane moved on to study social work at McGill University (BSW) and the University of Toronto (MSW). Upon graduation, she simultaneously worked in child protection services and established a private practice while volunteering at a rape crisis centre for several years, before pursuing doctoral studies at the University of Toronto.
Dr. Krane pursues qualitative research from a critical perspective. She interrogates front-line practices and their policy contexts through the lenses of intersectionality theory and feminism. In a recent SSHRC funded study on how workers respond to women as mothers in shelters for battered women, Krane uncovered the invisibility of women's experiences of mothering and the conditions under which they mother; she suggested that the focus on women as victims of intimate partner violence drives the practice in such a way as to deny the complexities of women's daily lives as mothers. Further, she exposed the tendency to view maternal relationships with children in a similar way to relations of power by men over women in instances of intimate partner violence. Dr. Krane thus calls for feminist informed practice to embrace multiple facets of women's identities and relationships, recognizing power as fluid and flexible instead of static.
Dr. Julia Krane's teaching draws on the theoretical frameworks that inform her research and scholarship, she insists that an analysis of social location must be central in teaching practice courses in intimate partner violence, family violence, child protection, and research methods. In addition to classroom teaching, Dr. Krane functions as a Clinical Consultant to the McGill Domestic Violence Clinic and a local shelter for battered women and their children and is the interim chair of the Women's Studies program and Advisory Committee of McGill.
Education
Ph.D. (University of Toronto) 1994
MSW (University of Toronto) 1982
BSW (McGill University) 1981
B.A. (University of Ottawa) 1980
Employment
2002-present Associate Professor
School of Social Work, McGill University
2000-2006 Clinical Consultant
McGill Domestic Violence Clinic
1999-2000 Sessional Lecturer
University of Toronto, Faculty of Social Work
1999-2004 Clinical Consultant
Auberge Transition, Montreal
1994 – 2002 Assistant Professor
School of Social Work, McGill University
1994 – 1995 Consultant to collectivity
Auberge Transition, Montreal
1991 – 1994 Assistant Professor, non-tenure track contract
School of Social Work, McGill University
Research
Areas of interest
- Critical approaches to child welfare and child protection
- Feminist practice responses to intimate partner violence
- Qualitative research methods
Description of current research
- Making Gender Visible in Child Welfare: An International Initiative. This IOF SSHRC supported grant seeks to collaborate in the development of a UK based Gender and Child Welfare Network, consolidate the contributions of the Canadian members and to expand the outreach of the Network to include a broad range of Canadian researchers.
- Constructing Maternal Identities: An Examination of Everyday Practices in Welfare State Organizations. This SSHRC funded project examines the experiences of young mothers, many of whom were poor and parenting alone, in relation to social and educational services specifically targeted to them. As co-investigator Julia's expertise in intimate partner violence provides the leadership for data collection and analyses at a shelter for battered women.
- Femmes, violences et contextes de vulnérabilité. This CURA grant brings together university researchers and professionals in social services across Quebec with varied interests in domestic violence. Of particular focus are factors that render women more or less vulnerable to violence due to social location. Dr. Krane, a co-investigator, brings to the research grant her expertise in domestic violence, mothering, and child protection, her affiliation with a local battered women's shelter and the McGill Domestic Violence Clinic (MDVC).
- Engaging mothers and fathers: Challenges for social service practices with parents. This SSHRC funded project proposes to engage in qualitative case studies of three distinct social service settings that respond to the needs of families during times of difficulty with a child: a hospital social service department, a community-based family service agency, and child welfare agency. It is concerned with how both women are constructed as mothers and men as fathers by helping professionals. It aims to offer direction to rethink policies, procedures and practices that unwittingly reproduce both mother blame and the invisibility of fathers in relation to their children's well-being.
Recent grants
2011-2013
Status of Women Canada: Blueprint Project
$200,000
Accessing second-stage services for women who have experienced abuse
Kamateros, M. (PI), Krane, J. (co-investigator)
2010-2011
SSHRC, Aid to Research Workshops and Conferences in Canada
$23,750
Failure to protect: Moving beyond gendered responses
Strega, S. (PI), Krane, J., Callahan, M., Lapierre, S. & Richardson, C.
2007 – 2012
SSHRC Standard Research Grant
$97,500
Engaging mothers and fathers: Challenges for social service practices with parents.
Krane, J., Davies, L., & Featherstone, B.
2006-2011
SSHRC Community University Research Alliances (CURA):
$1,000,000
Femmes, violences et contextes de vulnérabilité.
PI, Maryse Rinfret Raynor, Université de Montréal.
Publications
Strega, S., Krane, J., Lapierre, S., Richardson, C., and Carlton, R. (Eds) (2013). Failure to protect: Moving beyond gendered responses. Fernwood Press.
Bolen, R., & Krane, J. (2013). What do we really know about maternal “failure to protect” in cases of child sexual abuse? Exposing empirical inadequacies and moving forward. In S. Strega, J. Krane, S. Lapierre, C. Richardson and R. Carlton (eds.), Failure to protect: Moving beyond gendered responses. Fernwood Press.
Carlton, R., & Krane, J. (2013). Take a chance on me: Rethinking risk and maternal failure to protect in cases of child sexual abuse. In S. Strega, J. Krane, S. Lapierre, C. Richardson and R. Carlton (eds.), Failure to protect: Moving beyond gendered responses. Fernwood Press.
Carlton, R., & Krane, J. (2013). Neither shaken nor stirred: The persistence of maternal failure to protect in cases of child sexual abuse. In S. Strega, J. Krane, S. Lapierre, C. Richardson and R. Carlton (eds.), Failure to protect: Moving beyond gendered responses. Fernwood Press.
Krane, J., Strega, S., & Carlton, R. (2013). G-d couldn’t be everywhere so he created mothers: The impossible mandate of maternal protection or what is now known as “failure to protect”. In S. Strega, J. Krane, S. Lapierre, C. Richardson, and R. Carlton (eds.), Failure to protect: Moving beyond gendered responses. Fernwood Press.
Krane, J., & Carlton, R. (2012). Une pratique à la croisée des chemins: comprendre les femmes en tant que mères en maison d’hébergement. In S. Lapierre & D. Damant (eds.), Regards critiques sur la maternité dans divers contextes sociaux. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 185-204.
Krane, J., & Carlton, R. (2012). La pratique en matière de protection dans les cas d’agression sexuelle d’enfants: Perspectives féministes sur l’intervention auprès de mères non agresseuses. In S. Lapierre & D. Damant (eds.), Regards critiques sur la maternité dans divers contextes sociaux. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 205-227.
Lapierre, S., Krane, J., Damant, D., & Thibault, J. (2012). Négligence à l’endroit des enfant et maternité: un regard féministe. In S. Lapierre & D. Damant (eds.), Regards critiques sur la maternité dans divers contextes sociaux. Sainte-Foy: Presses de l’Université du Québec, 229-249.
Krane, J., Davies, L., Carlton, R., & Mulcahy, M. (2010). The clock starts now: Rethinking attachment theory in child protection practice. In B. Featherstone, CA. Hooper, J. Scourfield & J. Taylor, (eds.), Gender and Child Welfare in Society. Wiley Press, 149-172.