Edward Kruk is Associate Professor of Social Work at the University of British Columbia, specializing in child and family policy. As a child and family social worker in Canada and the U.K., he has practiced in the fields of welfare rights, child protection, school social work, hospital social work, and family services. He is currently teaching and practicing in the areas of family mediation and addiction.

 

Edward's first book, Divorce and Disengagement, was the first in-depth study of the experiences of divorced fathers and the phenomenon of father absence after divorce. His second book, Mediation and Conflict Resolution in Social Work and the Human Services, explores the application of mediation in eighteen fields of practice, with a focus on theory and practice relevant to each field. His third book, Divorced Fathers: Children's Needs and Parental Responsibilities, examines fathers' perceptions of their children's needs in the divorce transition, and parental and social institutional responsibilities to those needs.

 

Edward has published over twenty peer-reviewed research articles in a range of social policy, social work, sociology, and other scholarly journals on topics such as child custody determination, family mediation, fathers and divorce, women and addiction, and grandparent access rights. His book chapters, professional journal articles, and other papers span a similarly wide range; his most recent policy paper, Child Custody, Access and Parental Responsibility: The Search for a Just and Equitable Standard, is informing the development of a new approach to child custody determination in Canada and abroad. He has appeared in several documentaries, and his work is regularly featured in print, and on radio and television, including CBC, the Globe and Mail, and the National Post, and he was recently cited as "Canada's leading child custody expert" by two national newspapers.

Edward is an alumnus of the University of Toronto, where he completed his B.A. and M.S.W. degrees, cum laude, and the University of Edinburgh, where he completed his doctorate as a National Welfare Fellow. He has a B.A. (Hons.) degree in both Sociology and Psychology, a Master of Social Work degree, and a Ph.D. in Social Policy and Social Work. He has taught at both the University of Calgary and at UBC, and his work has taken him abroad, including Israel and Iran, where he has taught family mediation to social work students and practitioners.

Edward is a single father of two boys, Stephan and Liam. He is a Gulf Island resident, and also lives in Vancouver and Toronto. He is of Polish heritage, born in England, and is a citizen of Canada. He enjoys reading, films, running, hiking, camping, soccer, and as DJ Raven on Tree Frog Radio, spinning an eclectic mix of rave/dance music - downtempo, hip hop, electronica, dub, drum n base - and extemporizing on child and family matters.