Branka Sladović Franz was born on 12 December, 1971 in Garešnica. She received her secondary education at the Centre for Training and Education in Culture in Zagreb and graduated in social work from the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb in 1994. She received her master’s degree in 1998 from the School of Medicine, University of Zagreb, department of Social Psychiatry, with the thesis “Attitudes of Experts towards Child Sexual Abuse”. She defended her doctoral dissertation “Psychosocial Development of Abused Children placed in a Social Welfare Institution” in 2002.

 

From January to April 1997, she was a guest lecturer at Woodbrooke College, Birmingham, U.K., at the international training “Working with Conflicts”. Since 1995 she has been employed at the Social Work Study Centre at the Faculty of Law, University of Zagreb. She started as a junior researcher, and she is now a full professor at the Department of Theory and Methods of Social Work.

 

She is the course holder of the courses: Interpersonal Communication, Conflict Resolution and Social Welfare for Children at the undergraduate study of Social Work, co-leader of the course Selected Areas of Social Work at the graduate study of social work, where she teaches the field of Social Work with Children. At the postgraduate study programme in Psychosocial Work, she is the holder of the course Mediation and Social Work and Children in Alternative Care (which she also teaches at the postgraduate specialist study in Children’s Rights). She is the holder of the course Family Mediation, Divorce Mediation and Children in Mediation at the postgraduate specialist study programme in Family Mediation. She is the head of the postgraduate specialist study in Family Mediation.

 

She has mentored 50 graduate and final theses in the study of social work, one doctoral dissertation, one scientific master’s thesis and one final specialist thesis. She has participated in a number of scientific and professional conferences, including 17 international conferences. Independently or in co-authorship, she has published over 40 papers in scientific and professional journals and books with reviews as well as three books – the monograph “Psychosocial Development of Children in Children’s Homes”, a university textbook – “Interpersonal Communication for Social Workers” and the manual “Individual Planning for a Child in a Foster Family”.

She has reviewed a number of papers for domestic and foreign journals and books.

 

She participated in the following scientific research projects:

“Social work and social policy in the Republic of Croatia” (1995-1998),

“Psychosocial Aspects of Child Abuse and Neglect” (1998–2000), “Opportunities to Improve Child Care in Children’s Homes and Foster Families” (1999-2006)

“Models of Action and Evaluation Research in Social Work” (2002–2006), where she was the leader of the sub-project “Evaluation Research of Measures for the Protection of Children whose Development is at Risk in the Family” and

“Children, youth, families and social development of Croatia” (2007–2012).

 

She is the recipient of the Annual Award for Young Scientists and Artists of the Association of University Teachers and Other Scientists for the scientific paper in the field of social sciences published in the academic year 1998/99. She is the leader of the research project “Challenges in Studying and Support to Students Brought up in Public Care”. She also participates as a researcher in the UNICEF project “Strengthening the Capacity of the Social Welfare System to Implement and Monitor Measures for the Protection of the Rights and Well-Being of a Child under the Jurisdiction of the Social Welfare Centre”. She is engaged in the supervision of psychosocial work and family mediation as well as in the education of social welfare professionals in the field of child protection and resolution of family conflicts. She is the president of the Croatian Association for Family Mediation and an active member of the Croatian Association of Social Workers, the Association for Psychological Assistance and the Association of Youth Judges, Family Judges and Experts for Children and Youth. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the Chronicle of Social Work since 2004.