One Hundred Years of Children's Bureau Support to the Child Welfare Workforce

Abstract

This article reviews the history of the Children's Bureau's contributions to the child welfare workforce from its formative years to the present. The article recounts the Children's Bureau early use of consultation and dissemination to shape how public agencies administer child welfare services to later providing federal financial investment in the child welfare workforce. The article then traces the Children's Bureau's evolution from funding general social work education and child welfare training to more strategic initiatives that focus on the priorities of the child welfare system and the development of state agency leadership.

KEYWORDS:

• child welfare administration
• workforce
• leadership

Notes

The author would like to acknowledge and thank Debra Gilmore, Randi Walters, Linda Mitchell, Jack Denniston, and Debi Hatfield who helped to shape this article.

1. This foster care maintenance payments program was administered originally by the Department of Health, Education and Welfare's Bureau of Public Assistance in coordination with the Children's Bureau.

2. NCCAN was at one time an office distinct from the Children's Bureau. NCCAN's functions were coordinated with and then incorporated into the Children's Bureau over time. NCCAN officially became the Office on Child Abuse and Neglect within the Children's Bureau in response to legislation enacted in 1996.

3. The Children's Bureau has revised and reprinted the series twice since its original publication.

4. States seek reimbursement from the federal government under Title IV-E of the Social Security Act for their expenses in training case workers on certain child welfare and related topics. States report their costs in the same category as their expenses for training for foster and adoptive parents, among other parents, making it difficult to segregate costs for training workers precisely. There is typically more than $7 million allocated for grants to institutions of higher learning to fund BSW and MSW program participants destined to work in State agencies or for other training resources under Section 426 of the Social Security Act. Other federal funding streams can also be used to train workers (Levine, 2005).

5. States use multiple other funding streams for training child welfare workers, including Title IV-B child welfare services, Chafee Foster Care Independence Program funds, CAPTA State grant funds, among other block granted social service funding.