A New Perspective: Administrator Recommendations for Reducing Child Welfare Turnover

ABSTRACT

Child maltreatment impacts society on multiple levels, and consistent turnover in the child welfare workforce creates financial challenges and problems associated with service delivery. This study explores the qualitative survey findings from a statewide sample of child welfare administrators in one state (n = 86). When asked to provide suggestions for improving workforce retention, nine overarching themes emerged: compensation, decreased workload, organizational culture, job factors, professional development, frontline supervision, performance management, leverage external partners, and competent and engage leadership. A comparative analysis ensues, where these strategies are juxtaposed with those of frontline supervisors and frontline workers. Similarities, differences, and implications are explored.

KEYWORDS:

• Child welfare
• administration
• turnover
• retention
• workforce/workplace issues in human service organizations
• organizational and management theory and analysis
• management
• leadership and organizational change
• implementation
• community engagement and advocacy

Practice points

• Prior research into child welfare workforce turnover has largely focused on collecting feedback from the frontline staff, excluding the top-down perspectives of agency administrators.

• Administrator perceptions for reducing employee turnover were associated with the following areas: compensation, decrease workload, organizational culture, job factors, professional development, frontline supervision, performance management, leverage external partners, and competent and engaged leadership.

• A comparative analysis examines the categories of strategies to promote worker retention in order of frequency of observation by administrators, frontline supervisors, and frontline workers. Similarities, differences, and implications are explored.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This research did not receive any specific grant from funding agencies in the public, commercial, or not-for-profit sectors.