Dr. Ruiz-Casares is Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Associate Member of the School of Social Work and the Institute for Health and Social Policy at McGill University and an investigator at the Sherpa University Institute in Montreal. Dr. Ruiz-Casares has been awarded Fellowships by the National Science Foundation, the American Association of University Women, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, Cornell University, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec-Santé. She is also a former Richard H. Tomlinson Scholar. Her research program focuses on the wellbeing and protection of orphan, separated, and unsupervised children across cultures; children’s rights and participation; and policy and program evaluation of human services, particularly among ethno-culturally diverse communities. She leads mixed-methods studies on child wellbeing and protection cross-culturally, mainly in contexts of parent-child separation including child-headed households, children home alone, in monasteries, or in other alternative care arrangements. She is particularly interested in ethical and methodological issues involved in global mental health and protection research with and by children. Her research is inspired by action research principles. In the last decade, she has been a co-investigator on several research projects and networks funded through the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and the Fonds de Recherche du Québec on access to health and social services by migrant, refugee, and asylum seeking families; children rights to participation and protection; and knowledge mobilization. She is a Credentialed Evaluator with the Canadian Evaluation Society and member of the Standing Committees of the International Society for Child Indicators and the McGill Global Mental Health Program.
Contact: monica.ruizcasares [at] mcgill.ca (Email)
Current projects include
- Who Minds the Children? Clarifying the Role of Public Policies and Socio-Ecological Factors in Non-Adult Child Supervision in Low- and Middle-Income Countries
- International Survey of Children’s Wellbeing (ISCWeB) in Namibia
- Families First Positive Discipline for Everyday Parenting with Home Visiting Programme: A Cluster Randomized Control Trial
Recently completed projects include
- Geographies of Care: Professionals, Caregivers, and Children’s Views of (In)adequate Supervision Across Cultures (ENG, FRA)
- Alternative Care in Laos: An Exploratory Study With Children and Caregivers
- Parenting for the promotion of adolescent mental health (Review, Scan)
- Child Protection Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices (KAP) Survey in Central and Western Liberia
- Mental health and social adjustment of children without parental care in culturally diverse populations