Are We Prepared? Child Welfare Work With Parents With Intellectual and/or Developmental Disabilities

Abstract

Despite a growing body of literature addressing the problematic interface between the child welfare system and parents with intellectual and/or developmental disabilities (IDD), efforts to better train child welfare workers to address this interface have been negligible (Booth & Booth, 1993; McConnell et al., 2011a, 2011b; McConnell & Llewellyn, 1998, 2002; Tymchuk, 1999, 2001; Tymchuk et al., 1999). This study examined child welfare worker competency in working with parents with IDD, more specifically: 1) to identify child welfare competencies workers need when managing cases involving parents with IDD, 2) personal and professional variables influencing worker competency, and 3) training needs of child welfare workers.

KEYWORDS:

• child welfare
• training
• disabilities
• workforce issues
• child protection
• policy issues

Notes

*Item was inadvertently omitted from the survey questions related to perceived competency and training needs.

**Scores for Perceived Competency for this item were transformed from competency scale measures (see Methods). Respondents were not asked about their training needs for these items.

*p < .05;

**p < .01;

***p < .001.

*p < .05;

**p < .01.